


Vassal

by Island_of_Reil



Series: The Samavian Sequence [2]
Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: 1920s, Angst, Execution, Hanging, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Infidelity, Loyalty, Multi, Oath of Fealty, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Political Intrigue, Post-Canon, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:29:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is six years after the events of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/860067">"Lord and Liege."</a> Happy in his marriage to Paulina, who has since borne two little princes and a princess, Marco has been able to resist his longing for the Rat. In the meantime, the Rat has attached himself romantically to a nobleman whom Marco does not fully trust.</p><p>Marco has enacted some reforms to Samavian law, but nowhere near enough. When the nobility’s violent opposition put the Rat in danger, Marco gave up on reform temporarily. But he cannot do so forever, especially not with the threat of the Soviets so close at hand. The Rat suggests they quietly slip away to his lover’s remote mountain dacha to work on the reforms without opposition or the attention of spies. In this peaceful rural setting, they must acknowledge what they are to one another — and face grave danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**_Late January 1926_ **

Snow had been drifting down upon them for the better part of an hour. Marco found himself glad that, for once, the Rat led the way. It was easier to follow a black horse than a white one through snow-covered terrain in a snowstorm.

They had left Melzarr in the bone-splitting cold of dawn. As they rode south, the land rose beneath the horses’ hooves, slowing their pace, and the temperature continued to drop. The mountain wind was a knife in their lungs, even though they breathed through woolen balaclavas. Under his greatcoat, the old bullet wound in Marco’s side had been throbbing off and on for the last few hours.

The dacha was in a mountain valley to the north of Kragujevac city, the Rat had said. The city was a charming and cultured one, but Marco was rather glad they would not have to pass through it. He didn’t want to have to explain why the two of them were so far from the capitol, alone.

“We could always say you’re whisking me off for a mad few days of drunken debauchery and unnatural acts,” the Rat had suggested when the subject came up.

No one else on earth had as much leeway in speaking to Marco as the Rat did, not even his queen — but there were limits. He favored the Rat with a hard, cold glare until the Rat closed his mouth firmly and busied himself with organizing the papers they would be taking with them.

The irony was that this explanation, if taken seriously, might prove less incendiary than the real reason. Especially given who owned the dacha in question. If Marco allowed himself to ponder that irony for too long, he might actually laugh at it.

 

For each and every economic reform made to Samavian law, Marco had had to fight his nobles like a man trying to bring down a brick wall by putting his shoulder to it. Had it not been for the threat of the Soviets, he doubted he’d have had any success at all. 

As they had both expected, the Rat took the brunt of the nobility’s outrage. It didn’t matter that, without the Rat at Marco’s side, Stefan Loristan might never have reclaimed the throne of Samavia. It didn’t matter that the Rat was a decorated hero of the Great War. He was a foreigner, a guttersnipe, a drunkard lordling’s spawn, a hunchback, a cripple. A heretic, too, for that matter, although some went further and called him an unbeliever. Worst of all, he was a sodomite.

Of course, that implied the same of a few dozen men of the Samavian court. But they were of noble blood, hale body, and the True Faith. Their sins could be left between themselves and God. With one exception.

It was one thing for a man to, on rare occasions, lie with another man as he might a woman. Men were weak, lustful creatures, and if God hadn’t been prepared to turn a blind eye to at least some of their sins, He wouldn’t have given them the fruits of the vine and tree from which to make strong drink. It was another thing entirely to fall in love with another man, shower him with gifts, and take him into one’s political confidence out of lust for him.

Samavian’s other nobles had little love to begin with for Dragan, second son of the Duke of Kragujevac. He had chosen to spend most of his youth abroad while his Maranović kin and the Iarović alternately wallowed in ill-gotten gains and slaughtered one another. After the restoration of the Fedorović, he came home, marked as much by his suspicious affinity for common men as by what was deemed his cowardly absence from the civil war. Even his courageous service in the Great War did not make up for it. And the commoners under his command in that war held him in far too high a regard.

After his elder brother Ognjan fell to the Great Sickness, Dragan became his father’s heir, and he found it to his advantage to spend more time at court. There he befriended the Rat, whose keen mind for strategy — on the battlefield and off — impressed him deeply. Before long there was more than friendship between them.

That had been the case for nearly three years now.

The duchy that Dragan of Kragujevac would someday rule was one of rugged mountains whose half-civilized inhabitants bowed to their local lords and took little notice of those in Melzarr. Its capitol city, an ancient pearl of culture and education and now a stronghold of industry too, had once been that of all Samavia. The Kragujevački, city dwellers and mountain folk alike, had not forgotten that. Fourteen years ago they had been as eager as any other Samavians to thrust out their tyrannical nobles and usher the Fedorović back in. But that was fourteen years ago. Perhaps lust for glory, not to mention greed for gold, held greater sway now in their duchy.

Dragan had frequently allied himself with Marco on reforms. But Dragan was a subtle man. Even the Rat did not seem to know the future duke’s ultimate game — or, perhaps, Dragan had misled him, and the Rat was too besotted to realize it, Marco thought bitterly.

And, of course, Dragan was a Maranović.

More than a year had passed since the last round of reforms. Some had gone through, others not, but all had provoked gall-bitter quarreling, including within Marco’s own Council Chamber and with men who’d always stood behind him, like Baron Rastka.

Appealing to the Patriarch for help had been fruitless. At each of their meetings, the long-bearded high cleric of the Samavian Orthodox Church smiled beatifically and deferentially at Marco, listened to him explain how lack of reform not only put the country in grave danger but violated the precepts of Christ, promised to do what he could, and exchanged the kiss of peace with his king. “What he could” turned out to be absolutely nothing.

Worst of all, various encounters with noblemen had convinced the Rat to go about with a small knife concealed between his right hand and the handle of his right crutch.

“Rat,” Marco had said then, his voice raw with the effort of suppressing his fear, “if you so much as nick one of them, even in self-defense, I cannot promise you I will be able to keep you from dangling at the end of a rope.” He didn’t need to add that he wasn’t speaking of state executions.

The Rat’s expression was stony, but the pale eyes flashed with pain. “I know you can’t,” he said quietly. “If it came to that, I would leave Samavia without a word.”

Marco's throat swelled. “Where would you go?"

“Back to England. I’ve actual experience in war now, and I’m sure I could interest the British Army in my services. Espionage, strategy, intelligence, what have you. No one in England would fault me for defending myself against assassins. And my father, whatever else he was, was a gentleman. That counts for something with many.” The Rat’s laugh was a bitter one. “Too many.”

That was when Marco decided that it wasn’t _going_ to come to that. If he had to let reform lie fallow for a time, even a long time, that was what he would do.

To his relief, that course of action becalmed the nobles over the ensuing year. But the issue could not be dropped forever. The laws as they stood, even now, were an injustice to common Samavians — and it made the country tempting bait for the Soviets. As venal, as arrogant, as untrustworthy as the average Samavian nobleman was, he was far better than the volatile, menacing Georgian who called himself Stalin.

A few days after the Feast of the Epiphany, the Rat had mentioned to Marco that he had the key to Dragan’s dacha.

“It’s fairly deep in the mountains, in a quiet valley; no one in Melzarr will think to look for us there. Why not tell Paulina and the Council that we’re off for some winter hunting? We’ll ride out with notes and books instead of bows and arrows. We’ll be able to hammer out the details of the proposals without Rastka haranguing us or spies listening at the keyhole.”

Marco stared at the Rat as if the latter had just suggested a day jaunt to the Himalayas.

“And where, may I ask, will _your lover_ be while we’re there?”

He had meant it to sound coolly sarcastic. It came out considerably… not so. Even before the Rat’s eyes turned to flint, Marco wished he could take the words back. Any claim he ever had to the Rat’s intimate affections he had relinquished long ago.

After several beats of silence, the Rat said in too level and too quiet a voice, “It’s a summer house, Marco, albeit one with fireplaces. Dragan prefers to winter in his city.”

Of course. Marco took a deep breath.

“Rat… I am sorry. That was unfair to you, and that should have been beneath me.”

The Rat nodded; his eyes slid away from Marco, apparently pursuing some interesting flaw or other in the wainscoting.

Another awkward moment passed. Then Marco said, “Right. So we’ll need our paperwork, some pens and ink, some maps, a few of the law books… actually, does the dacha have much of a library?”

“A fine and extensive one,” the Rat said, with an ephemeral flash of something that might have been pride, “but most of it military topics, history, the sciences, or some combination of the three, with a smattering of fiction. The intricacies of law aren’t one of Dragan’s primary interests. We should bring the law books.”

“We should put together a bundle of provisions, too.”

“No need.” The Rat waved his hand. “There’s a well-stocked larder, lots of game and other meats and cheeses — I know where the key to that is as well. At this time of year we’ll have to worry more about thawing than about spoilage. There’s also a root cellar still quite full from the harvest.”

“I’m sure we’ll dip into both at least once, but I’d rather we not tax Dragan’s hospitality unduly,” Marco said. “If we can bear a ride through the mountains in winter and a few days in a cold summer house, we can bear a spartan meal or two.”

The Rat was quiet again, and Marco wondered if he had taken that as a slight to said hospitality. But then he said, “That’s fair enough, and considerate besides.”

Then, suddenly, he grinned. “And we’ve both had far worse, haven’t we?”

 

“Please, Papa, can I come hunting with you and Captain Ratcliffe?”

Crown Prince Ivor Stefan Fedorović, known to his family and a few others as Stefan, looked up into his father’s eyes from his seat in Marco’s lap. His own eyes were as large and deep set and solemn as Marco’s; right now, they were also hopeful.

Marco had let himself settle deep into the thickly upholstered armchair before the blazing hearth in the library. Now, he sat up straight to command his son’s attention.

“No, Stefan. For I need you to do something much more important for me than help with the hunt.” Marco took the smooth little chin in his hand. “I need you to be the man of the house while Captain Ratcliffe and I are gone. To look after your mother and your brother and your sister. Can you do that for me?”

The flicker of disappointment in Stefan’s eyes abated as he sat up straighter on Marco’s knee. “Yes, Papa, I can.”

“Why can’t _I_ be the man of the house, Papa?” came a petulant and slightly higher voice.

Prince Nikola Marco Fedorović was seated in the Rat’s lap facing outward, so the Rat did not bother to suppress a smile. Queen Paulina of Samavia hid hers briefly by pressing her face against the swaddling clothes of the infant Princess Ana Stefania Fedorovića, whom she held in her arms. But Marco schooled his voice and expression into sternness.

“Because Stefan is nearly five years old, Nikola, and you are not yet four.” _And Stefan is my heir, at that_ , Marco thought. It was not a situation in which playing favorites, or at least the appearance of same, could be avoided entirely. Nikola would have to defer to Stefan so long as both of them lived; let him learn to do so now, that it might come more easily later.

Nikola thrust out his lower lip. “Your face will freeze that way, Kol’ka,” Paulina said sharply, “and wouldn’t that be a shame, to ruin all that handsomeness? You’ll want the girls to come running someday!”

“No, I won’t!” Nikola said heatedly. This time the adults around him permitted themselves a chuckle.

They had often found amusement in how much each boy took after the grandfather for whom he was named, and not only in appearance. Marco was infinitely grateful that his firstborn and heir promised to be not just highly intelligent but even tempered, compassionate, eager to learn, and willing to take burdens onto his little shoulders. Paulina’s influence mitigated Marco’s sense that he ought to be testing his son the way his own father tested him, but the younger Stefan seemed inclined to duty by nature.

Marco had never met his father-in-law, Count and General Nikolai Romanović Terveov, who had been slain in the civil war. But over the last few years Paulina had often remarked how much little Nikola was turning out just like her own father. General Terveov had been a brave, even brash, man, clever but not much inclined to schooling, with good looks of the square-faced, somewhat fleshy kind. If one did not know Anna Vasilyevna Terveova very well, one might think her marriage to him had been a simple case of complete opposites attracting.

Marco wished the children could have known their grandfathers, very different men but each impressive in his own right. Or their paternal grandmother, who had died of a broken heart in exile when Marco was four. At least they had one grandparent to dote on them; Anna Vasilyevna had taken happily to the role of _baba_ , although with rather more cosmopolitan elegance than most Samavian grandmothers. Marco wondered whether and how much the baby asleep in Paulina’s arms would follow her brothers in taking after her own namesake.

The children also had a devoted uncle and aunt in Paulina’s adolescent brother and sister. But, on the paternal side, they had no one but Marco himself. Stefan’s death in the Great War had gained Marco a throne but cost him his only blood kin. No one could ever replace his father, but the sight of his own children always soothed an odd pain in his heart he hadn’t realized had been there since Stefan died.

Once again, the line was unbroken. Please God, it would ever be so.

 

It was nearly dark again when the Rat craned his shrouded head around his shoulder and the curvature of his spine to call out, “Marco. It’s not far.” He spoke in English, as they always did when they were alone together.

“How far is ‘not far’?” Marco called back.

“Perhaps another twenty minutes, half an hour at most.”

The Rat’s estimate was sound. Soon a large dark shape loomed before them amid a landscape only marginally less dark, and shortly thereafter they were reining in Sjaj, the stallion, and Gavrana, the mare, at its front edge.

Marco heard a few metallic clicks, then the hiss of flame as a point of light blossomed in the Rat’s hand. Beyond him and his mare were a pair of ornate double doors.

“The key’s in the left breast pocket of my coat. Would Your Majesty care to unlock the door for us?”

Marco brought Sjaj abreast of Gavrana and leaned to his right. The Rat, who held his cigarette lighter in his right hand, would not have been able to free his left hand from the mane of his horse without risking a fall. Nimbly, Marco plucked the key from its pocket, then dismounted from Sjaj in one smooth motion.

The key was as ornate as the doors, but right now Marco had no interest in its form, only its function. He was relieved to feel it turn smoothly in the lock, especially since his hands had begun to feel a bit stiff under their kidskin gloves.

“There’s a sconce on the wall on either side of the foyer,” the Rat called. “Do you see them?”

“Yes — let me have the lighter.”

Within a minute Marco had lit both sconces. He drew the door nearly closed to keep the wind from blowing the flames out, inserting a stick between it and the jamb. Then he was back at Gavrana’s left side, and he pocketed the lighter for the moment. When his eyes had readjusted to the dim light from the door he’d left ajar, he began to undo the straps of the specially made saddle brace from around the Rat’s left leg. Once the leg was free, Marco lifted it so that it hung over the mare’s withers and back.

“You’ll have to help me bring it round completely,” the Rat said with a flicker of annoyance. The annoyance, Marco knew, wasn’t with him. He walked around the mare and freed the Rat’s right leg from the straps, then pulled his left leg down to hang alongside it. The Rat clutched Gavrana’s mane in both hands now.

A long, slender bundle had been strapped vertically to her right haunch, as placing it across her back would have hampered her progress through the woods. Marco unstrapped it and unwound its linen covering, which he draped for the moment over Gavrana’s croup. He leaned the crutches against her haunch; she was used to this, and she made no movement or sound of protest.

“Ready, Rat?”

“Ready.”

Marco took the Rat’s outstretched right hand in his own and pulled as the Rat let go of the mane and launched himself off the saddle. He landed, in a manner of speaking, with his left arm around Marco’s shoulders. Marco thrust a crutch under each of the Rat’s arms. Now his captain was on solid ground again, even if it were snowy solid ground.

Marco slipped the lighter back into the breast pocket of the Rat’s greatcoat. “Can you light a fire on your own?”

“Of course.” The crutches left tracks in the snow on either side of those made by the drag of the Rat’s boots. “The kindling and long matches are kept close by the hearth. I can do the work flat on my belly.”

Marco held the door open again for the Rat. “Where are the stables?”

The Rat stopped briefly in the doorway and jerked his head leftward. “That way, nearly to the rear of the house. Six stalls, more than enough.”

A while later, the horses had been stabled, fed, and draped with blankets. Papers, maps, a handful of books, and other effects had been stacked and left on the dining-room table. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, two pairs of boots dried on the hearth before a blazing fire, with a greatcoat spread out on either side of them. Hanging from the mantel were two pairs of woolen stockings, two pairs of gloves, two thick woolen sweaters, and two balaclavas.

A few feet away from the hearth, atop a thick Oriental rug, were two large, deep armchairs and a small table between them. Marco, in the left-hand chair, stretched his legs forward. His feet, now bare, still ached from the dry, piercing cold of the mountains that even the sturdiest waterproofed leather boots didn’t keep out. Earlier he had been rubbing sporadically at his right side, as much to bring more blood into his chilled right hand as to quell the ache of his wound.

The Rat was in the other chair, his crutches propped against it. His head was tilted back, his lids heavy. He could not feel the cold, or anything else for that matter, from the tops of his thighs downward, but he had been chafing and flexing his hands continually before the fire. Hours of clinging to mane and reins had left them cramped.

On the table between them was a plate bearing crumbs of cold sausage, hard cheese, and brown bread, along with two pear cores. Their supper had been modest, compared with what they had both become accustomed to; once upon a time in their lives, it would have been a feast. On the Rat-ward side of the plate was a tiny silver ashtray with a cigarette stub in it, while on the side toward Marco was a white ceramic jug full of water. They’d found the jug in the dining room; Marco had had to set it before the hearth for a while to thaw.

Water wasn’t all there was to drink. Marco reached into the left hip pocket of his trousers.

“Rat?”

“Mm?” The Rat seemed to begrudge having to speak, let alone turn his head and open an eye.

Marco held up a finely chased silver flask. The Rat’s other eye opened.

“What’s that?”

“ _Šljivovica_.”

The Rat pulled a face as if he’d been offered not sweet plum spirits but warm spit to drink. “Sod that. What is it with you Easterners and your fermented jellies and treacles?” He reached into his own hip pocket. Marco thought he’d be retrieving his cigarettes again, but instead he took out a flask of his own, battered black leather over clear glass.

“Here, Marco. It’s called Talisker. There’s little good to be said of the Scotch but at least they make a drink for men, not boys _playing_ at being men.”

Marco grinned as he set his own flask down on the table and took the Rat’s from him. He’d met his share of Scotsmen who were far more impressive in every way than the violent sot of so-called breeding who’d begotten the Rat. But the mutual contempt of neighboring countries was a universal, he supposed. And if it hadn’t been for “boys playing at being men,” he thought, the courses of their lives would have run much differently. The Rat’s would not have run long at all.

“What’s so amusing, my lord and liege?”

“Oh, nothing,” Marco said idly as he took a careless pull at the Rat’s flask. The grin dissolved from his face immediately in a storm of coughing and spluttering — and reappeared on the Rat’s.

“I _told_ you it was a drink for men, didn’t I?”

Marco drew the sleeve of his shirt across his watering eyes. “Do the men of Scotland have guts of iron that require the tarnish to be removed from them regularly?” he gasped.

“Given what passes for food in that benighted shitehole? Probably.”

“As if English food were much better,” Marco muttered. He wondered if the Rat expected him to try the whiskey again. He eyed the flask in his hand warily, as if something might leap out of the neck and bite his scalded throat out.

“It _is_ much better, you bloody savage.” Marco wouldn’t have tolerated the epithet from anyone else, even in private and facetiously spoken, but it was well within his limits for the Rat.

“No, Rat, it’s _more plentiful_. There’s a difference. ‘Bland’ is not a synonym for ‘good.’”

“When ‘plentiful’ implies less of a need to cover up the taste of rancid meat with spices, the point is moot.” The Rat’s voice had taken on what was for him a rare patrician drawl; Marco suspected that was what the elder Ratcliffe, whom he had never met, had sounded like. “Now are you going to sit and contemplate that flask like a bloody icon all night? Because I’ve a better use for it.”

Marco concealed his relief as he passed the flask back to the Rat. He watched in appalled fascination as the Rat threw his head back and pulled down what seemed to be most of the remaining Talisker — and felt his cheeks grow warm as he watched the muscles work in the long, graceful arc of the Rat’s throat.

Truth be told, Dragan of Kragujevac had been only one of two reasons for Marco’s reluctance when the Rat first suggested making use of the dacha. As for the other… well, the news that Dragan would not be there gave Marco a moment of reflection. If nothing had happened between him and the Rat in the last six years, he had ultimately decided, nothing was likely to happen between them during their few days in Kragujevac.

 _It may not be possible to do so often,_ the Rat had said all those years ago. _But it will be possible at times._

In reality it had not been possible at all. From the early-spring evening Marco chose Paulina Terveova for his queen until the glorious summer day she and he stood under the garlands and shared a common cup, there had been no time for him and the Rat to escape to their cherished hillside glade on the Jiardasian border. For a very long time after the wedding night, he had had no desire to. Not with a wife who burned like dark fire in their marriage bed and, outside of it, slipped into the ancient role of queen as she might slip into a ballgown tailored to her body, with the same dazzling results.

Temptation is a patient adversary, and it bided its time. A few years passed; a few little princes slept in the nursery. Even a strong young woman needs time to recover from childbirth, and the mother of princes must devote more and more of her energies to the future of her sons. The Rat’s plain but rakish face, his strong slender fingers idly dandling his cigarettes, his storm-colored eyes that expressed everything and missed nothing, all these began to tug again at invisible strings leading to Marco’s heart. And, if he had to be honest, to other parts of his anatomy.

One day they sat alone in his study, speaking of politics and policy. At a lull in the conversation, Marco felt a tentative finger stroke the back of his hand, pulling on the strings hard, kindling joy and desire alike. But fear, too, and guilt. Marco forced himself to draw his hand away, and he sadly shook his head.

“Jem… I can’t. _We_ can’t.”

Something seemed to die in the pale eyes. Marco made no sound, but he could have gasped aloud with the pain it struck in him.

He could have reiterated the arguments he’d made three years before: that he wished to be as faithful to his queen as he expected her to be to him; that the church would disapprove; that discovery would make further reforms impossible. None of them would have brought that spark in the Rat’s eyes back to life.

The Rat gave the slightest of nods, withdrew his own questing hand, and, after a moment’s awkward pause, resumed speaking of matters political.

Not long afterward, Marco began to hear the whispers at court, of the Duke of Kragujevac’s dishonorable second son and his new plaything. “Plaything” was, actually, just one of various epithets he heard, and the only one repeatable in polite company. But gossip is beneath the notice of a king, and he gave no outward sign to anyone that he had ever heard it.

Inwardly, he smarted.

The Rat eventually lowered his flask, his eyes wider than before and his face flushed, and sank back into his chair with a broad smile. Drink, in contrast with tobacco and men, was a vice he handled with care thanks to the example set by his father. The irony was that, when he did indulge, he had no head for it.

“You’ll be little use to me tomorrow if you wake with a pounding head and a stomach that can keep nothing down,” Marco scolded, but the sternness in his voice was at least half mock. He had already picked up the flask of _šljivovica_ again and begun sipping at it. After the day’s ride it was wonderfully warming.

“If I do, I’ll soldier through it. My blood still feels like half-melted snow; it needs some fire in it.”

“Judging by your color, I’d say you’ve added quite a bit already.”

The Rat laughed at that. It was not his usual sardonic laugh, but a soft chuckle, with lambent undertones. Marco felt himself stir in response. He frowned slightly and took another sip of sweet wine.

“Marco?”

“Yes, Rat?”

The Rat’s smile was as soft as his laugh had been. “You do realize my motives for bringing us here weren’t… entirely honorable, don't you?”

How was it possible for one’s body to turn to both ice and fire at the same time? Marco said nothing for several moments. He stared into the hearth, watching the colors of the flames tumble over one another. He did not trust what might come out of his mouth; he did not trust his own voice.

At length he turned back to the Rat. Anxiety now contended with desire in the light-grey eyes. Marco bit his lower lip. Finally, he spoke.

“It has been a very long time. We have both chosen others. The stakes are much, much higher now, and they were not low the last time. You know how dangerous it would be.”

“I do know that,” the Rat said quietly. “I don’t shy away from danger.” He paused. “And, once upon a time, neither did you.”

It was softly said, but Marco was stung, and he didn’t bother to keep it from his voice. “Once upon a time, I had neither queen nor heirs. Whom do _you_ have to protect, Rat?”

The Rat flinched at that, the glow of his face darkening to crimson. But he spoke without hesitation.

“You, Marco.”

“And so you propose to ‘protect’ me with … a gamble that could cost me, you, my family everything. Just for pleasure.”

“No,” the Rat said, and his voice was sharp with anger now. “Not just for pleasure. If you don’t know that by now you’re a much greater fool than ever I’ve thought you — and, trust me, Marco, you are _so_ often an utter fool.”

Marco glared at him. “So what of Dragan? Is _he_ just for pleasure? Or something more?”

“If you’re going to refuse me again for the sake of _God and country_ ” — scorn dripped heavily from those three words — “then what bloody difference does it make?”

“Answer my question,” Marco snapped.

The answer came immediately, with not a single beat in pause. “Yes, he’s something more. He will always _be_ something more. But he’s not the one who made me who I am, he’s not the one I followed for thousands of miles, he’s not my lord and liege. Should he ever need my help, I would eagerly render it. But I am not sworn to do so, because I am not sworn to him. I am sworn, Marco, to _you_.”

Marco said nothing. He put the flask down onto the table, alarmed and humiliated that his fingers trembled slightly on the finely wrought silver.

“Since when?” he said harshly, and he knew he was, indeed, being an utter fool. “I don’t recall you ever pledging a formal oath of fealty to me, nor I accepting it."

"Oh, _for Christ’s sake,_ Marco,” the Rat grated. He reached for his crutches and pulled himself up out of his armchair. For all that he was furious and not entirely sober, he moved as gracefully as he ever did, like a bird catching a wind high in the clouds. Did strong spirits lend some men the wings of birds? Or did they make others more likely to see such wings…?

Three or four swings of his crutches, and the Rat stood before Marco. Then he shoved them away and let himself fall to the floor, where he lay belly down with his face inches from Marco’s feet. The crutches struck the rug on either side of him with soft thumps.

“What in the name of Hell are you doing?” Marco shouted.

The Rat raised his head, eyes narrowed and flashing. “Obviously I can’t bloody kneel to you, so you’ll have to settle for full prostration.” He clasped his hands as if he were praying and stretched them outward and upward. “I, Captain Jeremy Francis Landon Ratcliffe, humbly offer up myself as a vassal unto my lord and liege, Ivor II of Samavia, also called Marco Loristan.”

Half of Marco wanted to continue shouting incredulously at the Rat. The other half wanted to laugh himself into tears. He put a hand to his face, elbow braced on his thigh, and pulled in a deep breath, mastering both impulses.

“Are you going to accept or not, damn you?” the Rat demanded.

Marco lowered his hand from his face. His hesitation lasted one more second. Then he reached forward and surrounded the Rat’s clasped hands with his own: an ancient gesture in a modern age. Judging from the nearly electric spark he felt passing through the backs of the Rat’s hands into his own palms, still a powerful one.

“I, Ivor II of Samavia, also called Marco Loristan, accept you as my vassal, Captain Jeremy Francis Landon Ratcliffe.” He paused. They had no bible to hand, but the Rat, as he himself had once said, was but the most nominal of Christians. If that. “What will you swear upon?”

The Rat’s eyes burned into his. His voice was lower now and shot through with steel. “I swear upon my honor and upon my life that I will ever be faithful to my lord, will keep my sword and my shield ever at his disposal, and will never cause him harm. This homage I will observe utterly, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit.”

His lips remained parted, and he licked at them briefly. Something in his eyes shifted. Something caught fire in Marco’s belly. Something impelled him to seize the Rat by the shoulders and half-lift, half-drag him upward until he was in Marco’s lap, their faces inches apart. And then to incline his head forward—

The traces of whiskey in the Rat’s mouth burned on Marco’s tongue. Underneath them was the ashen taste of cigarettes. _Appropriate, when I am playing with fire._ He shoved the thought from his mind, seized the Rat’s nerveless legs, arranged them to fall on either side of his own thighs. The Rat, whose hands had been on Marco’s shoulders, now gripped the top of the armchair’s back and stared down at him, his breath beginning to come more quickly.

Marco looked up into his face, which was flushed with drink and with more than drink. A stranger might have taken his own expression for one of calm, studied neutrality as he reached between the Rat’s splayed thighs and then backward, cupped his hand, and slid it firmly upward. The Rat cried out sharply before winding his arms tightly around Marco and, as their mouths joined again, grinding the center of his body into that of his lord and liege.

Moaning into the kiss, Marco arched his own body upward. The Rat was like iron under his trousers, and Marco ached with his own hardness. He might never have touched another man intimately since one afternoon nearly six years gone… but men and women alike had scalps and ears and necks and throats, did they not? He dropped his lips to the crook of the Rat’s shoulder, pushed aside the collar of the fine undyed linen shirt, and began to lick and suck and scrape his teeth over the pale skin revealed. The Rat rewarded him with a deep, almost pained groan, and began to run his hands up and down Marco’s sides and back.

Before long his fingers were fumbling with the buttons on Marco’s shirt of fine black angora, and Marco’s own hands were grasping the hem of the linen shirt. He was tempted to just rip it away and to Hell with the buttons. He could buy the Rat a new shirt. Ten new shirts.

Then it occurred to him that an armchair was perhaps not the best place to make love to one who could neither stand nor walk unaided.

“Jem.” The name was both strange with disuse on his tongue and the most natural one in the world to utter right now. “I think we had better shift ourselves to the bed.”

“My crutches—” the Rat gasped.

Marco shook his head. “No need. Hold tight.”

In wartime, he had carried more than a few men out of harm’s way, or carried their lifeless weight out of the crossfire so they might be decently laid to rest. Each time, he and the other man had been been weighted down with arms, ammunition, gear, and uniform. He was nearly ten years older now, with a wound from those days in his side that still pained him when the air was damp and the wind blew cold, but he was certain he could carry a man clad only in shirt and trousers, and with legs like spindles, to another spot in the same room.

As he stood, he hefted the Rat with a soft grunt. The Rat made no sound but gripped Marco’s shoulders hard enough to leave marks. Smoothly, without staggering, Marco bore the Rat to the rear of the bedchamber, then lay him on his curved back against the coverlet of the great canopied bed. Excitement flared in Marco’s belly at the sight of him there, as hot and near painful as touching the penumbra around a match flame.

The Rat’s eyes were now glittering in his grinning face. Marco remembered that glitter quite well.

“You finally carrying me across the threshold, so to speak, and me not wearing white. Not that I’d be _entitled_ to wear it, mind you—”

“Shut up, Jem,” Marco breathed, now kneeling on the bed, before he covered the Rat’s body with his own and shut him up with his own mouth.

The kiss was rough and biting on both their parts, and short lived: The burning need became that of getting one another’s shirts off. For several moments they were one writhing mass of arms and hands, attacking buttons and shoving at hems. Marco was surprised, and, he realized, inflamed to see the Rat’s strong, clever hands trembling slightly as he unbuttoned Marco’s shirt and pushed it back over his shoulders. His own hands on the buttons of the Rat’s shirt were not much steadier, and he didn’t bother to try to free the Rat of it completely.

When both their chests had been bared, Marco dived at the Rat, eager to have as much of his own skin pressed against his captain’s as possible. They made a soft _thump_ against the coverlet as they landed, the Rat on his back again and Marco atop him. And then it was all a delirium of warm flesh, furious wet mouths, insistent fingers, thrusting hips, and desperate half-broken noises of pleasure.

Finally Marco pushed himself upward on his arms, panting, his knees on either side of the Rat, his unbuttoned shirt hanging down from his shoulders. He feared his trousers would burst if he didn’t unbutton them, and right now. The flash of forlorn abandonment across the Rat’s face gave way to a stare of lust-drunk fascination as he watched Marco fumble with the buttons, then reach in to free himself. His lips parted as Marco’s cock sprang free, buoyant in full hardness. He stretched out a hand, and Marco gasped as it encircled him.

“His Majesty’s scepter,” the Rat breathed. But this time he wasn’t jesting; the words were spoken reverently, and he stroked the engorged flesh with a purposeful gentleness that made Marco dizzy. “So beautiful, just like the rest of you. I haven’t tasted you in six years, Marco — will you let me again, now?”

The air thickened in Marco’s lungs. “Yes— let me—” Blasted words, as much obstructions as their clothes were. He swung himself over the side of the bed and pushed down his trousers, leaving them in a pile on the Oriental rug, then stripped his shirt from his upper arms and dropped it atop the pile. Naked, he leapt back up and knelt astride the Rat again, but higher on the bed this time, his cockhead brushing the Rat’s lips.

When the Rat had first, and last, taken Marco into his mouth, the top of his head had obscured Marco’s view. Now, he kept his eyes, the darkness at their centers crowding out the pale grey, trained on Marco’s as he engulfed the dull-crimson tip with his lips. Then his hands rose to bracket Marco’s flat hips, and he raised his head from the coverlet, sucking more rigid flesh down his throat than Marco would have thought possible.

The shockingly hot wetness, the sight of the Rat’s lips working around him feverishly, the keen eyes missing not the slightest flicker of Marco’s lashes or tremor of his lips… he had enough self-control to last, he thought, but every second all he could think about was coming hard down the Rat’s throat, his seed fairly boiling out of him, the Rat’s muffled moans as he swallowed frantically.

They had been anticipating and finishing each other’s thoughts for more than half a lifetime. Marco wasn’t surprised at the light of realization in the Rat’s eyes, but still he groaned, his frustration nearly painful, when the Rat unsheathed him from his throat and mouth.

“That’s not how I want you to come, Marco,” the Rat whispered, his lips glistening with pre-come. Marco understood immediately. The violent new throb in his cock seemed to precede that understanding.

“We’ll need something to... ease the way, won’t we?"

The Rat turned his head toward the night table at the right side of the bed. Marco noted the drawer, leaned over, slid it open, found the small vial of oil inside.

“Well, this is an unexpected boon,” he said, taking the vial from the drawer.

“I wouldn’t call it unexpected. Consider who owns this dacha.”

Marco flushed slightly. He pushed from his mind images of the Rat lying half clad and panting on this bed with not Marco, but a fair-haired, well-built nobleman of cursed blood and dubious loyalties, kneeling naked and rampant above him and reaching for the oil.

Logistics seemed a good substitute for those images. “So…” he said, letting the word fade into the air with hesitation. Five and more years with a passionate woman in his bed wasn’t going to get him through this bit, unfortunately.

“ _So,_ ” the Rat said, amusement curling his lips, “you work that oil inside me and open me up. With your fingers. At first, anyway.” This time Marco’s flush was entirely one of arousal.

He put the unopened vial down beside them on the coverlet, and he set his hands to the buttons of the Rat’s trousers. The Rat caught his breath with the realization of what was about to happen. When the buttons were undone, Marco glanced upward, but the Rat’s hips were already rising so that Marco could draw the trousers down.

He had made the Rat come in his hand, all those years before, but at the time he hadn’t actually seen the Rat’s cock. Now it was in his full sight, dark red, nearly flat against the Rat’s hard-muscled belly. More heat pooled in Marco’s own belly as he caressed it, slipping his hand downward through wiry brown hair to cup and stroke the tightly swollen sac beneath.

The Rat closed his eyes and whimpered. Encouraged, Marco continued, fingers working softly and steadily, until at last the Rat said from between clenched teeth, “If you keep playing with me like that, I’m not going to last. I want to come with you fucking me.”

The last three words struck Marco hard and hot in the loins. He gently pushed the Rat’s legs apart. Then he picked up the vial, uncorked it, and hesitated again.

“Pour a little into your palm and wet your fingers,” the Rat said, his voice steadier but still breathy. “You’ll use one finger at first, then two. You’ll know when to add the second.”

Marco nodded. He decanted enough oil to fill the hollow of his right palm completely before setting vial and cork onto the night table with his left. Then he bent his right middle finger and forefinger into his palm, dabbling them in the slickness, sliding them against one another until they were covered completely. And he lowered his right hand between the Rat’s parted thighs.

The Rat gasped as one fingertip found and delicately circled the opening to his body, and he lifted his hips to give Marco as much access as possible. Marco’s left hand encircled the Rat’s right ankle, pulled it up to his own shoulder, and held there as he slid his right forefinger deep into the Rat’s body. With a shuddering groan, the Rat tilted his head back, eyes closed, lips parted.

Marco slid the finger all the way out, then back in again, then out. The Rat had begun to move his hips back and forth, fucking himself on Marco’s finger. Marco swallowed hard. The air in the room seemed to have solidified again.

There had been only slight resistance to begin with; soon there was nearly none. The Rat seemed ready for a second finger, as he had predicted Marco would know. Now the hot channel of flesh clung obscenely to both middle finger and forefinger, fluttering and tightening spasmodically around them as they thrust. Small noises escaped the Rat’s lips that might have been taken as sounds of pain, were it not for his right hand straying to his cock and beginning to ease the foreskin up and down.

Marco hitched up his left shoulder to hold the Rat’s ankle there as, with his left hand, he seized the Rat’s right one and pulled it away. “No,” he said, his voice deepened with lust and edged with harshness. “You said you wanted to come with me fucking you, didn’t you?”

He had never spoken that word before, the English word or its equivalent in any other tongue. Its shape was as odd in his mouth, and as hot in his own ears, as the Rat’s given name. Possibly that was what made the Rat’s eyes fly open, wide with surprise.

“Yes, my liege,” he whispered. There was no mockery in this, either.

For many years, the Rat’s loyalty had been a precious thing to Marco. But never before had he _understood,_ with a sense that lay beneath his nerves and perhaps even his brain, an ancient knowledge that rises in a king like the sap in a towering oak: The Rat was _his_ , vassal and lover alike. It mattered not how many other men he had lain beneath or still would lie beneath, even the man in whose bed they lay now. It mattered not how forward or flippant he could be, how willing to call Marco a fool when it needed to be said. It mattered not that Marco was joined in holy matrimony and profound love to a patriot of Samavia who had borne him two little princes, a woman for whom the Rat had nothing but the gravest respect and a heartfelt liking.

Marco commanded an entire nation of his own people, but he commanded no member of that nation as thoroughly as he commanded his captain, his _aide-de-camp_ , the guttersnipe spawn of a disgraced lordling, who had mastered his broken body with the will of his razor mind and followed Marco out of a London alley across nearly all of a continent. It was a bond of fealty as sacred and as unseverable as a vow to God, as his own marriage, as the unbroken line of exiled kings from whom he descended. And this understanding made the room threaten to come crashing down around his head.

Drawing a deep breath to steady it, he continued to work his fingers in and out of the Rat, watching the strain of desire pull his captain’s features taut, watching the slim powerful hips rise and fall as the Rat pushed back and forth against Marco’s hand. Marco let the Rat’s leg fall to the coverlet so that he could place his left hand on the Rat’s chest, sliding it down firmly to his ribcage, caressing each hip, moving down to his belly, carefully avoiding the swollen cock that pressed into it.

Instinct, rather than any experience or guidance, suggested the Rat was ready for him. But Marco wasn’t ready for the Rat. Oh, _physically_ ready, certainly, but he was taking much, far too much pleasure in keeping the Rat waiting to be fucked, making him squirm around Marco’s one hand and beneath the other, his shirt spread out beneath and around him like pale-gold wings.

He slid his fingers out of the Rat and lifted his right hand so both of them could see it. The Rat had closed his eyes again; feeling Marco’s hand abandon him, he opened them again onto Marco’s fierce gaze. He watched Marco remove the great royal ring from his right ring finger and set it on the night table beside the vial. Then he watched that hand descend once more to the coverlet and disappear from his field of vision.

The wide triangle of fingers pushing into him made the Rat arch up off the bed. The sound he made was more whine than moan, and a droplet of pre-come trembled at the tip of his cock. Marco wondered how long the Rat could last before he began to shoot seed upward onto his own chest. He wondered how long he himself could last, watching the Rat writhe against his hand. But he didn’t want the sight beneath him, the feel of the Rat clenching at his fingers, ever to end.

Too soon, far too soon, he heard the Rat whimper, “Marco…” and fix him with hot eyes that had almost no grey left in them.

Marco withdrew his hand from the Rat one last time. His palm was still slick; he slid it over and around his cock, jerking spasmodically at his own touch, biting the inside of his lip to counter the sensation with pain. Then he shifted forward, steadying himself with his hands against the Rat’s hips.

His heart, he knew in his mind, must have pounded this hard any number of times before: in a London cellar, in a Munich opera house, on several Samavian battlefields, on a cold filthy table in a cold filthy field hospital, on another grand bed as he undid what seemed like the endless pearl buttons of a wedding gown. His body couldn’t dredge up those memories; it insisted that never before had his heart threatened to burst out of him like this. Nor could it remember his cock ever having been so hard, although his mind knew otherwise here, too. But perhaps his body was right in that his hands had never trembled quite this hard before. He wondered with a fillip of wry humor, so out of place just now, whether they would be steady enough that he could guide himself completely into the Rat.

And then the Rat’s hands were on his shoulders, and the Rat was pulling himself upward, Marco downward. The movements of the next few seconds would forever be strangely absent from his memory. All he knew was that his eyes had fallen shut in a blink, and when he opened them again, he and the Rat were one.

He remembered, six years before, the aching and the awe in the Rat’s face after he had made, had felt, Marco come, had watched him collapse trembling and gasping upon the blanket they’d laid on the hillside. The Rat’s expression then was as nothing compared with his expression now: astonished, afire, and infinitely tender. His lips were parted as though he had something of the utmost importance to say, but no words existed to say it. One of his hands remained on Marco’s shoulder; the fingertips of the other slid down Marco’s cheek as though down a facet of a diamond.

“Oh,” he finally whispered. That one syllable, Marco thought, could have filled libraries.

Marco lowered his face and touched his lips again to the Rat’s. Less an act called a kiss than another union of body and what animated the body: not two mouths, now, but one soft warm hollow of gliding tongues and smooth wetness. He felt his hips begin to shift of their own will. The Rat broke the kiss to gasp, “Yes, please, Marco, _move._ ”

And Marco moved.

The clinging caressing tightness, the slickness and the consuming heat, his moans and the Rat’s winding about one another in counterpoint… the sensations splintered his thoughts, the splinters flew out of his head. He was falling and falling into a deep, hot well, its fervid waters seeping into him, into his blood, hardening his nipples, seething in swirls across his neck and down his spine, curling his toes, gliding through his hair… no, those were the Rat’s fingertips…

He was thrusting faster and faster into the Rat, the Rat in turn arching up more and more urgently beneath him, gripping his shoulders so hard Marco thought the bones beneath might part with a loud snap. He pushed his face into the spot where the Rat’s throat met his clavicle, scraped his teeth over the skin of the hollow and then over the bone itself, felt as much as heard the incoherent noises rising up through the Rat’s throat, drove into him more and more savagely—

—and then he began to tense, then convulse, forceful spirals of pleasure rising from his balls into his abdomen and coursing down through his legs. He heard the Rat gasp, “Oh, God, yes, Marco, come inside me, come _now!_ ” And then his own mouth was tight against the Rat’s and yet his choked cries were barely stifled, and the fingers of his left hand twisted in the coverlet and those of his right dug into the Rat’s forearm, and in a handful of short hard thrusts he spent, wrenchingly, deep inside the body of his vassal. And the Rat was not just trembling but _shaking,_ hard, beneath him, and he tore his mouth away from Marco’s to throw his head back and cry out loudly as he spurted hot and wet between their bodies.

Cries quieted to soft moans to gasps as they enfolded one another and rocked back and forth in ever-diminishing arcs. For a long time their mouths separated only briefly and unwillingly. Then the Rat buried his face against Marco’s neck and whispered, “Oh. _Marco._ ” And Marco had no words in reply, only the tightening of his arms around the Rat.

 

There was time, eventually, for Marco to find his handkerchief in his greatcoat pocket and dab it with water from the jug. He attended first to the Rat, then to himself; the water was still chilly, making them wince. The Rat sat up in the bed to remove his shirt and toss it to the floor. After that, weary with travel, mellow with drink, immersed in bliss, they barely moved in one another’s arms once the bedclothes had been drawn up tightly around them. Sleep came quickly and enveloped them deeply.

Marco would never fully remember the dream he was having, other than that it was peaceful and sweet, until it began to churn with loud rough noises. He realized he wasn’t dreaming them. As his eyes flew open the dream was no more than tattered cobwebs across his mind; as the sounds of men’s shouts jolted him upright in the bed, not even that.

The Rat was already sitting upright beside him, eyes wide, bare shoulders and torso rigid. Before either could speak, heavy footfalls were pounding on the stairs. The glow of the embers gave an eerie light to the hulking, long-bearded figure who suddenly filled the entire doorway of the bedchamber.

“God in Heaven!” The intruder had a deep voice, rough with the archaic accent of Kragujevac’s mountain valleys — and with disgust. “This is the man who rules us?”

“What do you here?” Marco demanded. He leapt from the bed, aware that not only was he naked but he had no weapons to hand. His and the Rat’s pocket knives were in the pockets of their coats, still spread upon the hearth — across the room, on the other side of the armchairs, near the door. He’d never reach the hearth in time to fight off the giant who’d burst in on them. Never mind the three, four, five other men crowding into the doorway around him — or the others in the hallway.

“I answer not to sodomites,” the large man said scornfully, his black eyes hot with loathing as he advanced slowly on Marco.

“I am Ivor of Samavia, and you shall lay no hand on me nor on my companion, unless you wish to hang for treason!”

The intruder and several of the other men laughed ugly and insinuating laughs.

“Your ‘companion,’ is it?” a smaller, goat-faced man sneered from the doorway. “’Tis a pretty word for the fucked-out leavings of a nobleman’s second son. Bad enough we’ve a sodomite for a king, but could you not have procured yourself anything better?” More laughter, equally ugly.

From behind Marco the Rat shouted — not in modern Samavian, in which he’d been fluent for years, but in the same dialect as the intruders: “We shed our clothes after the room grew too warm for sleep, you inbred sons of syphilitic whores!” His voice was coldly angry and unusually deep, a tenor he used to great effect with subordinates who displeased him. But Marco could hear in it a faint reedy note of terror.

The goat-faced man sneered again. “Oh, for certes. Just as I’m certain you two traveled here alone for _perfectly_ innocent reasons.” He turned his head toward the large man and said with a cruel grin, “They’re yours, Uroš.”

The fear and anger simmering in Marco were suddenly folded into a vast, purposeful calm. He thought, _I may not be able to save myself or the Rat. But I can damned well make at least a few of you wretches suffer._

There was very little distance left between the enormous man and Marco when the latter launched himself forward and drove a knee keep into Uroš’s belly. The air went out of his attacker’s lungs with a deep grunt. Before Uroš could recover fully, Marco sprang forward again, seized the flowing black beard, and drove his fist into the red lumpen nose. A savage jolt of satisfaction went through him as he felt bone and cartilage give way beneath with an audible crack.

Uroš roared and swung a massive fist at Marco in return, but he swung wide as he staggered forward to Marco’s right, blood dripping from his bent nose. Marco’s eyes widened: What had propelled Uroš forward was the Rat, who had dived nearly horizontally out of the bed at him and flung his left arm around the huge man’s waist for anchorage. Over and over he drove his right fist hard into Uroš’s spine and kidneys.

Marco rushed Uroš again, but this time the flailing fist clipped the side of his head, and what it lacked in focus it made up for in mass. Stars of pain dappled his vision, and he gulped air to try to clear them. It took barely half a second — half a second in which the big man had pulled the Rat’s left arm away from his midsection, then seized the Rat’s right wrist in his other great paw. Markedly lighter than Uroš and unable to kick, the Rat stood no chance once his fists were out of striking distance. Uroš hoisted him slightly and lobbed him hard into the nearby wall. Nausea spiked in Marco’s belly as he heard the heavy thud, then a second, softer one upon the rug near the bed — and not even a gasp out of the Rat.

Then the back of his skull exploded with agony, and he fell to his knees beside his unconscious captain.

“That will do.” The goat-faced man strode past him, rubbing his knuckles. “Take him.”

Marco was breathing heavily and shallowly, his head spinning in a sick-making way. _They’re going to ransom me,_ he thought. He braced himself for the feel of rough hands hauling him to his feet... but he felt none. As soon as his head weighed fractionally less than a millstone, he lifted it and saw the Rat, limply slung over an intruder’s shoulder.

“Let him _go!_ ” he roared. He could barely get to his feet right now, let alone fight again; giving vent to his rage was the only alternative to foundering in ice-cold terror.

The man carrying the Rat jeered. “And how intend you to halt me?”

Suddenly there was a shout from behind them. “Ho! Look what _I_ found, lads!”

Marco couldn't prevent his pounding head from swiveling on his neck. The goat-faced man stood beside the night table, holding something up. Something that glinted in the dying firelight.

“And beside a phial of oil, too. My word, _Your Majesty,_ I wonder why ever you felt the need to doff your ring earlier this night?”

“Aye, you could likely stuff the entire royal treasury up his catamite’s slack arse,” another man said, and they all burst into raucous laughter. The goat-faced man slipped the ring onto his own finger, still grinning broadly.

Marco let his head drop back down. The room had begun to swerve again as the intruders began to file out. Vomiting in front of these wretches would be just one more humiliation.

“King Ivor?” a gentle male voice asked, perhaps a minute later.

Later, he’d berate himself for being so easily gulled, but right then and right there the faintest hope of kindness was as irresistible to him as was a lodestone to iron. He raised his head without thought and looked with smarting eyes into two maliciously grinning faces, one of them like that of a goat. The room detonated around him as the fist connected with his cheekbone and the edge of his own ring sliced into his skin.

 

Cold. So cold. And so much pain.

Light was filtering in through the window. Pallid, anemic light. It seared his eyes and, behind them, his brain.

There was a thick rug under him, soft against his face. How did it get there? No, how did _he_ get there...?

Oh.

He had hoped he’d been dreaming. But the rug wasn’t a dream. Nor was the sticky, matted hair at the back of his head, or the smaller amount of dried blood on his cheek, or how both spots flared with pain when he gingerly touched them.

Before panic or fear could well up in him, his father’s voice, calm and untroubled, echoed in his head. Through it echoed another voice, its accent not of Europe, its owner bound to nothing and no one on earth.

_Let pass through thy mind, my son, only the image thou wouldst desire to see a truth. Meditate only upon the wish of thy heart, seeing first that it can injure no man and is not ignoble. Then will it take earthly form and draw near to thee. This is the law of that which creates._

Marco took a deep breath, and let it out. He took another, and let it out. He didn’t speak, as it would have taken needless energy, but he thought, over and over, _I am not afraid. I shall not be afraid. I am not in pain. I shall not be in pain. I am not cold. I shall not be cold. And in some way I shall find the Rat._

When he had wrestled the pain down to a dull throb that could be relegated to the back of his mind, he considered his current lot.

He was alive.

They had made no serious effort to kill him.

They had taken the Rat, who was presumably still alive, and they had taken Marco’s ring.

 _They meant for me to take some sort of message from this,_ he thought. Unless… unless they had stolen or driven off the horses, and raided the larder, and taken the firewood, and stolen his and the Rat’s clothes too.

He looked to the hearth. To its side were as much kindling and as many logs as had been left before he and the Rat had fallen asleep, as well as the long matches. Their boots and coats were still on the hearth itself, their other effects still hanging from the mantel hooks. So far, so good.

He looked back toward the bed. Two shirts and two pairs of trousers still lay on the floor wherever they’d been dropped. Or flung. _I didn’t dream_ that, _either,_ he thought wryly, but right now he could take no joy in that memory.

Slowly he rose from the floor, his muscles stiff from cold, and flexed and stretched until the stiffness began to abate. Before he could start to shiver again, he pulled on his shirt and trousers, which were cool to the touch but completely dry now. He put his stockings back on, stuffed his feet into his boots, tugged the sweater over his head, and pulled on both greatcoat and balaclava. The gloves could wait until he ventured outdoors, he thought, and tucked them into his coat pocket.

Downstairs, the books, maps, and papers still sat on the dining room table. Even the elegant, and costly, fountain pen that had been one of the Rat’s Christmas gifts to him lay undisturbed next to them, along with a bottle of ink. Another good sign. Marco wondered whether the invaders had simply missed these items or had deemed them unimportant. Too many Samavians were unlettered, and this was especially so in the mountains that, ironically, surrounded the seat of learning that was Kragujevac city.

The double doors gaped, letting in sharp cold air. A soft clean wing of snow had settled over the tiles of the foyer, and the candles of the wall sconces had long since guttered out. The doors showed no sign of having been forced open. Marco remembered with a sick wrench of his gut that he hadn’t bothered to draw the deadbolt. Who would trouble them in such a remote spot, in such foul weather? _Who indeed,_ he thought as he pulled on his gloves. But the assumption had been reasonable the night before, and there was no use stewing in self-reproach.

As he waded through the snow behind the house, he could see that the lock remained in place on the larder door. If he were stuck here, he’d have to smash it, but at least the intruders hadn’t done so. When he arrived in the stable and found the horses flicking their ears and staring expectantly at him, the wave of relief was thorough: He _wouldn’t_ be stuck here.

But where should he go?

He pondered this as he removed his gloves once more, gathered a few dried apples from a bag hanging on one wall of the stable, and fed first Sjaj and then Gavrana, crooning to them and affectionately scratching their heads with his free hand.

There were only two choices: Kragujevac city, or Melzarr. A fifteen-mile ride back into civilization was much more appealing than a ninety-mile one. It was also a bad idea. He had no trustworthy allies in Kragujevac city; to turn up there alone, with the marks of other men’s fists on him, would invite gossip and possibly more violence. And even if he _had_ trusted Dragan of Kragujevac… well, there was a conversation Marco didn’t exactly fancy having. _I was fucking your lover in your own bed in your own dacha, we fell asleep in your bed, and the next thing I knew, a gang of ruffians were upon us._

So. Melzarr.

He returned to the master bedroom. He and the Rat had finished the brown bread the night before, but there were still some sausage and cheese left. Despite a lack of appetite, he forced himself to eat it all, as well as a dried apple from the stable he had pocketed. The journey back to Melzarr would be long, frigid, and taxing; his head still ached with the blows it had taken, and his body still ached from cold. Ignoring pangs of hunger was one thing, becoming faint enough to tumble from his mount quite another.

They had traveled relatively lightly, so it did not take him long to pack everything they’d brought and bundle it all back onto the horses. Luck favored him with the discovery of an extra bridle and a rope halter in the stable. Gavrana was no longer used to such things, but she was an intelligent and biddable creature. Before long, Marco was seated on Sjaj, leading the mare beside them, and he set off to the left of the weak winter sun hovering in the sky.

All tracks, human or otherwise, had been snowed over. Marco, like the Rat, was a creature of cities, but he had slept and fought in the forests around Melzarr during the Great War. He had no difficulty spotting the marks of their passage through the woods the night before, especially in daylight. The intruders hadn’t come this way, he didn’t think.

The ride back north was, for a mercy, uneventful. The day was clear, the wind calmer. Gavrana adjusted herself to being led on the rope, and much more of the return journey was downhill than the journey out had been. By late afternoon, pangs of hunger were setting in, but Marco drew on his old training — and he told himself that after the beating he’d taken last night, hunger could only be a good sign.

The sun was down by the time he approached the outskirts of Melzarr, but by then he had long since rejoined the broad road heading north, and the mountains had begun to shrink away behind him, giving way to the flat expanse of the river plain and the gentle dip of the great basin. It was ludicrous, he’d been away less than two full days, but his eyes stung as he saw the tall ornate buildings of recent decades, the broad church domes topped with their delicate crosses, the whitewashed towers glowing with the fond attentions of the moon.

He took a circuitous route to the palace, toward its rear. Backstreet residents recognizing Sjaj was preferable to the attention he would draw approaching the main entrance. Fortunately, few were out and about in the dark and cold.

A solitary Palace Guard stood at the rear gate at this time of night. Marco reined in Sjaj and brought Gavrana to a halt. The Guard looked up with surprise. “Your Majesty?”

He might not have recognized Marco behind the balaclava, but Marco recognized him. “Good evening, Stanislav. Captain Ratcliffe is temporarily indisposed. Would you be so good as to call for a stable lad, then let me into the gate?”

 

Less than half an hour later, he lay in the great clawfoot tub in the bathroom of the royal suite, submerged to the waist in hot water, a ball of soap on the rim beside him, his head tilted back and his eyes closed.

He had refused to let the maidservant draw him a bath. He was perfectly capable of turning a tap handle, he insisted. All he wished at the moment was that she bring him a small tray of cold meat and bread and a cup of _šljivovica_ , then leave him alone to soak.

“As pleases you, Your Majesty,” the woman, about ten years older than he, had said neutrally. If she found it odd that he had not removed even his balaclava once he had come indoors, she had the sense to say nothing of it. Occasional eccentric behavior in his or her master is a trifling thing for a royal servant to contend with.

After eating just enough to sate his hunger and washing it down with a few pulls of plum spirits, he stripped to the skin, leaving everything he’d been wearing in a heap on the floor. He began the bath lying flat, drawing up his long legs so the rest of him would fit into the tub, and reaching behind his head with the soap ball to wash the crusted blood from his hair and scalp. Then he turned his face into the water to clean off that which his own ring on the fist of another had drawn from him.

The water had begun to turn tepid and pinkish grey by then, so he drained all of it and turned the handle of the hot tap again. He thanked God as the tub refilled with clean hot water that he had had the foresight to suggest both electricity and plumbing be installed in the palace a few years before and that Paulina had readily agreed. All the inconvenience of living around the workmen for months had been well worth it.

When the tub was again full, he had soaped the rest of himself and let the water bear the slightly grey suds aloft. He would eventually have to rise from the bath and make use of the cloud-like Turkish towels on the rack, then slip into bed next to, hopefully, a sleeping Paulina. The bruise and cut on his face could be explained away once he had had warm, restful sleep.

Just this moment, he would let the water warm his abused body and soothe his troubled mind.

_“Marco?”_

He'd had no warning. Every hinge in the palace was kept well oiled, and Paulina’s was a light tread. He raised his head and spied her standing in the doorway, staring back at him appalled.

“What in God’s name…?” In a handful of strides she was by the tub, and she dropped to one knee, holding onto the rim with one hand and touching his face with the other. "And where is your ring?”

He jerked his head away with an anger not directed at her. He should never have indulged himself in a soak, like a pampered noblewoman. If he had risen even five minutes earlier he could have been dry, clad in pajamas, and in their bed in the dark before she’d had a chance to see his face.

“It is nothing, Paulina.”

“‘Nothing,’ my foot.” She grasped his chin and turned his head back to her; there was no point resisting it, now that she had seen. “Someone struck you in the face, and don’t tell me otherwise, for I’ve a brother who’s had his share of fisticuffs and I had a father who was the same way.”

He said nothing. She demanded, her voice suddenly tight, “Where is the Rat?”

Marco sighed. “It is a long story.”

“Did you and he fight? Was he the one who hit you?”

 _“No.”_ Both Marco’s hands went to his face. "No,” he repeated, more quietly and less emphatically.

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Is he all right?”

He could lie to her, or he could tell her the truth, or he could remain silent, which would be more or less telling the truth. He sighed again.

“I don’t know. I hope to God he is.”

She was silent again. When he raised his head to look at her, her dark eyes were wide, her full lips drawn taut, her pulse rapid at the side of her neck.

“Darling… please, send for Lord Rastka for me. I will explain all, I promise, in the morning. Right now I must speak with him, man to man, and after that I will need to sleep.”

She blinked. “That bad, then?”

As both his wife and his queen, she was obliged to heed his command, even a command phrased as a plea. He wanted not simply her obedience, but her trust, and he had long since realized that being candid with her as much as state affairs permitted was the best way to earn it.

“Yes. That bad.”

She rose to her feet, a grim look in her eyes, and turned and left without a further word.

Rastka, like Dragan, wintered in urban surrounds; he appeared at the rear gate less than half an hour after Paulina had dispatched the messenger. For the next few hours he and Marco sat in the otherwise-empty Council Chamber with the doors shut. Except for his physical intimacies with the Rat, Marco confided in the old baron about everything that had happened in the last two days, as well as what had preceded it.

When Marco had finished, Raska said, coldly angry, “I had _told_ you you were pushing the nobility too hard, Your Majesty!”

“I make no apologies for that,” Marco said sharply. “I still deem reform to be for the good of the country. And the nobility answer to me, not I to them.”

 _Including you,_ he thought but didn’t say. He had been only twelve when he had first met Rastka. The baron had come to defer to him more and more as Marco had taken up arms, attained full manhood, and assumed the throne. But Marco suspected that, in some ways, he would always be a tatterdemalion twelve-year-old in Rastka’s eyes.

“In theory, my lord and liege, you are correct.” Rastka sipped at his glass of Schnapps. “In practice it is a bit more complicated than that.”

“Well, what’s done is done.” Marco waved a hand impatiently. “What are we to do now?”

“I would counsel Your Majesty to send word to Dragan of Kragujevac, whether you trust him fully or not. He will almost certainly have background knowledge you do not, and he will have spies in his duchy who may have seen or heard something of use in the last two days. You may not have complete power over the nobility, but you have enough to compel Dragan’s cooperation.” Rastka paused. “I should think that the possible fate of Captain Ratcliffe would compel it, in any case.”

Marco said nothing.

“Beyond that,” Rastka continued after a few beats of silence, “I think you will have to wait, Your Majesty, for word from your attackers. I agree that they meant to send you a message. We can hope that if they had meant to murder Captain Ratcliffe they would have done it before your eyes, rather than go to the trouble of hauling him off somewhere first. Making you hunt for… remains serves no political purpose. Viciousness, perhaps, but you said there were about a dozen men, and that is quite a few for this to be any sort of personal vendetta. I suspect that his safe return will be something you are made to bargain for.”

Marco nodded. Then he said, in a quiet and flat tone, “Thank you, my lord Rastka. I greatly esteem your counsel, as always, and I am grateful you were able to come to the palace on short notice. I believe, however, that I must rest before I make any more decisions.”

A few more heartbeats passed. Then Rastka said, “Your servant as always, Your Majesty,” rose, and left the Council Chamber.

Marco sat in the great silent room for a while longer, too tired to think much. He contemplated the colors thrown on the table and nearby wall by the shade of the Tiffany lamp at his elbow; it had been a gift from an American ambassador two years before. At length, he too rose, doused the light with a tug on the little chain, and slipped from the room.

 

The note arrived during breakfast.

Marco took it from the servant, then excused himself from table. Paulina’s dark brows climbed her forehead, but she said nothing. Stefan’s eyes lifted to mark his father taking his leave of the dining room, then dropped to his place setting again, and he too said not a word. Nikola remained absorbed in his food. The children’s nursemaid remained absorbed in the boys and their baby sister.

Heart accelerating, he strode to his study. He shut the door, sat in his chair behind the great desk under the portraits of his father and himself with the royal seal between them. His gut churned as he opened the note.

> _If you value the life of your “companion,” and if you wish for certain secrets to remain secrets, you shall make it known publicly that you will seek no more reforms to Samavian law. When you have committed yourself in this wise, he shall be released unharmed._

He had expected the threat to the Rat’s life. He hadn’t expected the blackmail, although, he realized, he should have. He dropped the note face down onto his desk and put his head in his hands.

Once more, he never heard the door open, but this time he did hear the soft pad of slippers. He lifted his head and glared. His study was a sanctum; he had never expressly forbidden Paulina or the children to enter it, but it was tacitly understood. Or, at least, he had thought it was.

“Paulina. Leave, please.”

The color rose in her face. For the first time in the six years he had known her, he saw not only her mother but her father as well in it.

“No, Marco, I will _not_ leave,” she said, approaching his desk.

“I _order_ you to leave,” he said, his voice strained.

“And do what, if I refuse?” she demanded, grasping the front edge of the desk and leaning over it. “Have me flogged? Beat me yourself? For wondering why my husband would come home looking as though he’d lost a tavern fight, without the royal ring on his hand, and without his close companion by his side? And why he would refuse to tell _his queen_ one damned thing?” Seldom, if ever, did Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova use profanity.

He stared at her, mouth open, briefly, then got out “I would _never_ …” before his throat closed. For the first time he could ever remember, he silently cursed his father. _You could teach me superhuman self-control, you could teach me the secrets of a Buddhist sage who lived at the top of the world, but you couldn’t teach me how to argue with a headstrong woman?_

Her eyes had been on his face. Suddenly they flicked down to the desk. He felt a spurt of alarm, and his hand shot out of its own accord, but hers was quicker, and the note was immediately out of his reach. She held it before her, read the two sentences on it, then let it fall back onto the desk.

“‘Secrets,’ Marco,” she said quietly. "What sorts of ‘secrets’?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with,” he snapped.

Her face twisted with rage. “What are you trying to hide from me?” she shouted.

“I am trying to _protect_ you, you damned fool!” he roared back.

“I do not _need_ protection from ugly truths! I lost my childhood home and friends I loved dearly to the Bolsheviks, I lost my father and other loved ones to the civil war, I lost yet _more_ loved ones to the Sickness, and I lost the last years of my schooling to the threat of assassination! If you could be killed at any moment, _I want to know,_ Marco, so that I can follow my mother’s example and make ready to flee with our children at the drop of a pin!”

She fell silent, but her body continued to heave with labored breaths, and her knuckles on the edge of the desk were white. It cost Marco a great effort not to sag with defeat in his chair.

“All right,” he said hoarsely. “As the note implies, I wish to push reforms again. Without them we are easy prey for the Soviets. I dropped them last winter because there had been threats to the Rat’s life. He and I did not go hunting two days ago; we rode out to Dragan of Kragujevac’s dacha in the mountains with paperwork and books so that we might draw up and hammer out policies in peace.”

“So Dragan is aiding you in this?” she asked.

He flushed. “No… the Rat has the key to his dacha. Dragan is in Kragujevac city and did not know we were at the summer house.”

She stood there blinking in silence for a moment. He wondered what she thought.

He continued, “In the middle of the night, a gang of thugs entered the dacha, beat both of us, and made off with the Rat and my ring.”

Softly, she asked, “And the secrets, Marco? What are those?”

He dropped his eyes to the floor. Then he raised them again.

“I have not been faithful to you.”

Her expression turned quizzical. “That’s… not a pleasant thing to hear. I am sorry that I have failed you, Marco, that you seek the beds of other women. But I do not understand why they would think to blackmail you with it, when it is a thing that most men and all kings do.”

His heart felt as though she had dug her fingernails into it. “Paulina… no. You have not failed me. Far from it. I could not have chosen a better queen. That is the truth, not idle flattery.”

“But I am not all you want,” she said evenly. “You have a mistress, or perhaps you tumble serving maids.” She sighed. “It was not as though I thought it would never happen, but I did not expect to be confronted with it. And I still don’t understand its import to these men.”

He drew in a breath and took the leap.

“No, darling, you are not all I want. But…” He looked her in the eye. “It is not a mistress. It is not serving maids.”

Her lips parted. Her expression seemed as though she could sense a devastating blow massing itself in the air. He would be the one delivering it, and he would be able to offer her no comfort after.

“Who is it, then, Marco?” she whispered.

“It is the Rat,” he said tonelessly.

She made no reply, simply stared at him. Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds. Then she turned, walked to the chair that leaned against the left wall of the study, sat down, and contemplated the backs of her hands in her own lap.

“… Paulina?” he said softly, after perhaps five minutes had gone by.

She did not reply, at first. Then she said, in a strange, cold voice, “How long has this gone on, Marco?”

“He and I have… been intimate twice. The first time was six years ago, perhaps a week before I announced our engagement at the Grand Ball. The second time was at the dacha the other night. That is all.”

“And the intruders caught you in the act?”

He flinched. “No. Not in the act. Afterward, asleep together.”

She was silent for a short while longer. Then her mouth twisted.

“So. My husband, the father of my children, the ruler of my country, the heir of half a millennium of great kings… is a sodomite.”

Marco felt his heart fall into his belly, and his belly into the depths of Hell.

A moment later she said, “I had heard the rumors about the Rat for years, of course. But people say all manner of things out of malice, especially at court, and he’s disliked for other reasons. I assumed that if you kept his company, then the rumors were probably not true.” Her voice turned as bitter as valerian. “I had no reason to suspect he would corrupt you.”

Marco said nothing. He could have asserted that he had long wanted the Rat as much as the Rat wanted him. He didn’t see how it mattered, now, or how it would be any comfort to her.

She drew a deep breath.

“If he returns alive, Marco… I cannot tell you not to associate with him, but I myself want nothing more to do with him. And I do not want him around my children any longer. Especially my sons.”

The blood, the life, the rage came flooding back into him hard. “They are _my_ children as well, Paulina, and he will continue to be like an uncle to them. Whether you like it or not.”

She turned her head, finally, to look at him. He had a flash of what General Terveov’s opponents must have seen on the battlefield just before they died.

“If I have to, Marco, I will speak to the Patriarch and beseech him to intervene.” Her voice was very quiet, the words encased in ice. “It is my duty as a mother to see to it that my children are not set upon the path of sin.”

His body went cold again, as cold as it had been when he had woken up on the rug in the dacha. Once again he had nothing to say, nothing that would have changed anything for the better.

She rose from her chair and left the study. She closed the door softly behind her, that it made the quietest imaginable click. It made the hair on the nape of his neck rise higher than if she’d slammed it hard enough to jar it off its hinges.

He returned his face to his hands and, for the first time since the death of his mother more than twenty years before, wept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragan of Kragujevac comes to Marco of his own accord — with questions, answers, and a daring plan for rescuing the Rat and bringing the traitors to justice.
> 
> Obtaining Paulina’s forgiveness, as well as her understanding, will require an entirely different sort of courage from both Marco and the Rat.

The soft knock on the study door made him jump.

“Yes?”

“Your Majesty,” a male voice said, “my lord Dragan of Kragujevac is here to see you.”

Marco glanced at the clock on the mantel. Nearly forty-five minutes had elapsed since Paulina had walked out. His tears had long since dried. He could not, he thought, afford to lose more time or energy to self-pity. If he had managed to carry on his duties while his father lay still warm in his grave, he could manage now. Let Dragan think Marco’s eyes were red rimmed from lack of sleep.

“Show him in,” he ordered.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The door swung open, and a manservant entered, quite dwarfed by the tall and broad-shouldered man in his late thirties who followed him into the study. The servant made his bow, and then he departed, closing the door firmly behind him.

The second son of the Duke of Kragujevac bowed as well. “Your Majesty.”

“My lord Kragujevac,” Marco said.

“Not quite yet,” the other man said drily, in a voice even deeper than Marco’s and gravelly with it. “My father still lives.”

There was no point in skirting the inevitable with more pleasantries. “I assume Baron Rastka sent you here.”

Dragan’s fair eyebrows climbed his ruddy forehead. “No, Your Majesty. I have come here of my own accord.”

“And what did you wish to speak to me of?” Marco asked neutrally.

In an equally careful voice, Dragan said, “In the mountains of my duchy I have men, and some women, who are loyal to me who keep me abreast of unusual happenings. Two mornings ago, a few of them at different places spied what appeared to be the royal stallion, and the mare belonging to Captain Ratcliffe, bearing riders of indeterminate identity. Yesterday morning, still others noticed the same horses heading back north, but with only one rider, seated on the stallion and leading the mare.”

Marco said nothing, merely regarded Dragan expectantly.

The duke’s son continued, “I thought it would be prudent to check on my dacha. I rode there, and I found snow in the foyer, unfamiliar possessions on the table, muddy bootprints all over the stairs, blood on the rug of my own bedchamber, and a small dent in the wall near the bed.” There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Oh, and yes, a small vial of oil had been removed from the night table and uncorked, and some of the oil was gone.”

Marco had a great deal more self-control than most men, but he could not prevent himself from turning pale. Dragan did not acknowledge it with either words or facial expression; he merely concluded, “So, Your Majesty, I took to the road late yesterday morning and stayed at an inn in Melzarr last night, as I wished to meet with you posthaste.”

Marco rose from his chair and braced his palms on his desk. “I am guessing, my lord Dragan, you know even more than you have actually told me.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” Dragan said with equanimity, “but I have told you quite a bit, and you have told me nothing. If you will pardon my impertinence, I would very much like your full account of what happened in my own house.”

The blood returned to Marco’s cheeks with force. He might outrank and distrust this man, but he had partaken of Dragan’s hospitality without his knowledge, been intimate with his host’s lover in his host’s own bed, and witnessed as well as suffered crimes while there. And, both of them knew, he needed Dragan’s help.

“All right,” he said. He gave Dragan the same account he had given Rastka. Let the man come to his own conclusions about the vial of oil. Marco was sure he already had anyway.

By the time Marco finished, Dragan’s eyes had narrowed and his jaw was tight.

“Almost certainly, Your Majesty, the men who took the Rat are loyal to my late brother. Ognjan was one of those who thought Kragujevac city should be restored as the capitol of Samavia. Had he not died of the Sickness he might have actually attempted to gather an army and sack Melzarr. God knows there are enough men in the mountains who sympathize with such a goal.”

“But you are not one of those men, my lord Dragan?” Marco asked with deceptive idleness.

The blue eyes turned to chips of ice in the otherwise impassive face. “No, Your Majesty. I am not.”

Undeterred, Marco continued, “You are a Maranović, my lord. That alone would make me a fool not to probe your loyalties. In addition, some might question your absence from Samavia during the civil war.”

“Yes, my lord and liege, I am a Maranović,” Dragan said curtly. “There is family loyalty, to be sure, but not all Maranović think with one mind, no more than any other family. I left Samavia before the lamp was lighted because the corruption sickened me, as did the endless violence between own my kin and the Iarović. As a second son I had neither any great motivation nor unseverable obligation to remain. When the civil war broke out, I stayed abroad because I did not wish to be compelled to choose sides, either to support the more loathsome members of my extended family by helping them slaughter the Iarović and the Fedorović wholesale, or to slaughter _them_ instead.”

“And what if your brother’s men someday succeeded in taking Melzarr, in restoring your own city to capitol status?” Marco asked quietly.

Dragan’s gaze did not waver. “I have no interest in their game, my lord and liege. Samavia wallowed in blood for half a millennium that culminated in the Great War, and in both that and the Great Sickness we may have bled more than in the preceding five hundred years. That is more than enough blood for me, for my lifetime. But maybe not enough for my brother’s men: They would happily cut my throat, and that of my father too, and set another of the Maranović line on the throne. There are plenty of Kragujevački in the mountains with Maranović blood in their veins, however diluted. If they had to, these traitors would set an inbred halfwit puppet with the proper bloodline on the throne and rule the country through him.”

Marco held his gaze, not displaying the relief he felt. For himself, and for the Rat: His captain had chosen better than Marco had credited him. But he was not wholly comforted, not yet.

Dragan was saying, “Almost equally certainly, I know where they have taken the Rat. There is one mountain in particular that has long been a base for such traitors; they operate from a deep cavern fairly high up its side. If you give me three days, Your Majesty, I can gather a few dozen men to take this cavern. If you feel able to climb that high and fight afterwards, you are more than welcome to join us, along with any trustworthy men of your own you believe up to the task as well.”

Marco took a deep breath.

“I am not uninterested in your offer of help, my lord, and I am grateful that you offer to render it. However, before I accept it, I would very much like a declaration of fealty from you.” He paused. “Before witnesses.”

Dragan was quiet and expressionless for a moment. Marco wondered if he had taken insult. But eventually the duke’s second son said without much intonation, “I shall obey, Your Majesty. Shall we get this out of the way now, so that I can return to my duchy and begin to gather men?”

Marco summoned and dispatched a palace messenger, then adjourned with Dragan to the throne room. Waiting for them there were Rastka, Vorvensk, and three others of the Council Chamber whose daily duties were carried out at the palace. Rastka closed the great doors behind Marco and Dragan.

If this commendation ceremony was neither as formal as was the usual custom, nor as charged as what had passed between Marco and the Rat two days before, still it was not without its power. Without prompting, Dragan removed pistol, dagger, and pocket knife from his belt and lay them on a side table. Then he approached the throne, where Marco had taken his seat. He dropped to his knees, clasped his hands together like one in prayer, and stretched them out to Marco. Marco in turn took Dragan’s hands between his own.

“I, Dragan of Kragujevac, humbly offer up myself as a vassal unto my lord and liege, Ivor II of Samavia.” Despite the supplicating words and pose, Dragan’s voice was fierce and steady, and he did not drop his eyes from Marco's. Though there was not a hint of erotic fire in them, Marco remembered the Rat’s eyes burning into his own, and he felt a tremor he did not show.

His own voice rang out in the vast echoing room. “I, Ivor II of Samavia, accept you as my vassal, Dragan of Kragujevac.”

Rastka held a bible out to Dragan. The duke’s second son placed his right hand on it and incanted, “I swear upon my faith in God that I will ever be faithful to my lord, will keep my sword and my shield ever at his disposal, and will never cause him harm. This homage I will observe utterly, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit.”

Marco looked to the five Councilors gathered around them. “You all bear witness to this oath of fealty.”

“We do, my lord and liege,” they replied, almost as one.

“It will be written into the royal books,” Marco said. “Stand, Dragan of Kragujevac.” And his new vassal obeyed.

It was no part of any commendation ceremony, but on instinct Marco thrust out his arm, his hand open. Understanding immediately, Dragan of Kragujevac clasped it with his own, and Marco found himself echoing the smile on the lips of the duke’s second son.

 

The next two days were tense and lonely ones.

Before others, especially the children, Paulina and Marco betrayed no sign of discord with one another. To have done so would have been unthinkable; they had both been trained too well, and gossip was the last thing either of them wanted.

Alone in their bedchamber was another matter. The first night, Marco simply did not speak to Paulina, any more than she to him, and he kept to his side of their massive bed with its grand canopy. The room was comfortably warm, especially beneath the bedclothes, but he keenly felt the lack of her against his back or his chest.

The second night, as he got into bed, he laid a gentle, tentative hand on her shoulder. With so much riding on what happened tomorrow, he had little libido just now. He sought something more precious than her body.

She went rigid at his touch. It was answer enough. With sorrow, he dropped his hand and once again curled away from her.

Hours later, he woke at the touch of his valet’s fingers on his wrist. The night sky outside his window was just beginning to pale. He nodded his thanks to the old man and carefully slipped out of bed. The valet silently helped him into his clothes — all black, and plainer than he had ever worn since the age of twelve.

He had not told Paulina of his plans. Before he left the bedchamber, he slipped a folded note out of the drawer of his night table and left it on the top of hers:

> _If I do not return in three days and you receive no word of me, follow your mother's example._

After a desultory breakfast alone in his study, he swung up into the saddle upon Sjaj. With four Palace Guards in his wake, men whom he and his Councilors had decided could be trusted, he set out south once again.

The journey this time was longer but not as arduous, for they were headed for Kragujevac city. Often the road was little more than a slender dirt track, but still it was a road, not a trail through the woods. Though the air was cold and snow threatened constantly, no more than a brief flurry fell upon them from time to time.

Well after the supper hour they began to see the rooftops of stately buildings, mostly those of the University of Kragujevac, cheek and jowl with the domes of churches. There were also schools for children and adolescents, dark at this hour; museums, also silent; bookshops and other shops, some closed for the night and some not; brightly lit cafés and restaurants and theatres full of patrons; taverns from which loud voices and snatches of fiddle or pianoforte music issued; and the rather decrepit Old Palace. Marco had heard that this last building was undergoing renovation and would be turned into a museum of the duchy’s and city’s history; deserted scaffolding against its façade testified to that plan.

Kragujevac city was not as large as Melzarr, nor did it dazzle as Melzarr did with soaring buildings and spires and gleaming whitewash and the bustle that attended any active capitol. But it was possessed of an old, dignified grandeur, and Marco did not think it out of the realm of possibility that it would one day displace his own city again as capitol of Samavia.

 _But it won’t be soon,_ he thought. _Not while I live._

It was once again colder here than in Melzarr, but there were more people out and about than there would have been at home in such weather. The Kragujevački, Marco imagined, were accustomed to the bite of the thin air. He sought an inconspicuous route to Dragan’s city manor, as he had to his own palace. Dragan’s main residence was small by the standards of Melzarr’s nobles, but in the old and cramped streets of Kragujevac it loomed large. 

Waiting at the rear gate were three stable lads, who took the horses’ reins and led them away; and Dragan’s guards, who quietly ushered Marco and his entourage into the manor. One guard opened a door off the rear entranceway, which revealed a flight of stairs to a lower level. Marco and his men followed Dragan’s men down the stairway, then down a short corridor. Their procession ended at the threshold of a large, windowless room well lit with electric sconces. 

“Your Majesty,” said Dragan of Kragujevac from amidst the roughly two dozen men gathered in the room. He bowed, and the men around him did the same. Then he nodded at the gate guards, who took their leave. 

“My lord Dragan,” Marco said, looking the ensemble over. A few might have come from the city’s less-savory streets, but in the main they seemed to be cut from much the same cloth as his and the Rat’s attackers: mountain born, tending to either large and hulking or compact and wiry. All were rough handed and hard eyed; if any striplings were among them, they looked old for their age. Most of the men were bearded, though some sported just the long and luxurious moustaches of current fashion. None wore clothes that had ever been fine, and in a few cases the garments seemed to hang together with nothing more than patches. 

There were four or five exceptions, men whose garb was well made if not showy and who did not look quite as ill used by life. They did not carry themselves with the arrogance Marco associated with the nobility, but from their miens and their physiques he guessed they had fought in the wars and survived for very good reasons. And one of them looked familiar: a handsome face, a cool and cynical cast of features, one thick lock of silvering fair hair tumbling across the blue eyes— 

_“Rudolf?”_ Marco said incredulously.

Prince Rudolf of Austria grinned. “You didn’t recognize your old drinking companion, Your Majesty? Has it been that long?”

“But… how did you get here so quickly?”

“There is this new invention, my lord and liege, called a telephone,” Rudolf said drily. “I have one, and my lord Dragan has one. You and your lovely queen do not? Did you not write me the other year and tell me your cozy little abode now had electricity? And there is also the somewhat older invention known as the train. In any case, I have known Dragan since he was a young man in self-imposed exile, and therefore he knew that I spent much of my youth gamboling about the Alps. He rang me a few days ago to see if I might wish to join this little expedition. I am not the limber young man I once was, but I’m sure I can keep pace with the other city dwellers here, if not the mountain men.”

Marco found himself returning the grin, then closing the distance between himself and Rudolf and catching the prince up in a tight embrace, earning himself a surprised laugh and several hearty slaps on the back. He couldn’t say he was forward to tomorrow’s events, but seeing an old friend and confidant lightened his heart considerably.

Dragan made introductions. The other well-to-do men were Jovan Buća, Count of Jagodina; Vukan Nemanjić, Baron of Ćuprija; Branimir Jakšić, Voivode of Velika-Plana; and Grgur Vraneš, a second-generation merchant from Kragujevac city. Marco had met Buća and Nemanjić perhaps each once before, at court, but neither man spent much time in Melzarr.

The mountain dwellers in the room stood apart in three distinct groups. As Dragan explained, they came from three allied clans of the region. Each group had a leader, and only these leaders — Čedomir Orlović, Damjan Harambašić, and Gavrilo Rovčani — were introduced to Marco. They bowed anew and addressed him as _Your Majesty,_ as the wealthier men had, but there was little deference in their eyes, voices, or overall manner. That, they reserved for Dragan. It was proverbial in Samavia that, to the Kragujevački of the mountains, Melzarr was not simply remote but inconsequential: If such a wild region was to be ruled at all, it would be by one of its own, or, failing that, a man who understood its people. Dragan of Kragujevac seemed to have such an understanding.

“Right,” Dragan was saying. “The servants will bring down supper for us all — nothing fancy, my lords, just meat and bread, with pears from the root cellar. And no wine, just water, for we’ll need clear heads for the morning. I should have a pallet for every man here, and I will spend the night in this room as well, so that we might have a swift and well-organized start. Your Majesty, Your Highness, my lords, _Gospodin_ Vraneš — you’ve no objection to sleeping on the floor for one night, do you?”

“Not at all,” Marco and Rudolf said, almost simultaneously. Marco glanced briefly at the other four addressed, wondering if they had hoped for soft beds and would chafe at their obligation to follow the example just set. But he saw not a flicker of emotion to that effect on any of their faces; all of them simply nodded.

“Excellent.” Dragan smiled. “However, before we all settle in, Your Majesty, I think we should get you properly kitted out.”

 

The cold bit into Marco’s face through his balaclava as it had on his initial journey down to the mountains. Had it been not even a week ago? The rest of him was much better protected. Under a short fur coat he wore two woolen shirts; under his trousers he wore thick long woolen undergarments. The cap pulled over his balaclava was lined with fur, as were his leather gloves, and too the sturdy cleated boots he wore over thick woolen socks. Yet all the garments had been ingeniously tailored to permit free, even athletic movement.

His weapons were his own: the dagger strapped to his left thigh, the Steyr to his right. He had used neither since the Great War except ceremonially, but better to be armed and out of practice than to be unarmed, he had thought.

Dragan, Rudolf, Buća, Nemanjić, Jakšić, and Vraneš were likewise each armed with pistol and dagger. The mountain men carried an array of short knives, small clubs, and ice axes. Europe had been awash in cheap rifles since the war, but a rifle wasn’t precisely the ideal weapon on a slope or in close quarters.

They had all wakened hours before dawn, pulled on their clothes, and proceeded in near silence to the rear gate. There stood a small fleet of shaggy, barrel-bodied ponies laden with gear. _As ragtag a lot as we are,_ Marco thought. They all mounted, made their way through silent city streets lit only by a frosty moon and its stars, and slipped into the foothills of the mountains to the north.

The mountain in question was ten miles north by northwest of the city. The ponies were not swift nor elegant like Sjaj or even Gavrana, but they seemed impervious to the cold, and they negotiated snow, ice, and rock at a variety of angles without trepidation. Reaching the mountain took a bit more than an hour, after which the ponies were tended to and the gear distributed.

The mountain dwellers paired off into climbers and belayers, the former looking for any anchorage they could find on the slope face. If they failed to find it — and more often than not they did, for the men who occupied this mountain had no interest in encouraging others to climb it — they hammered their own pitons into the rock or ice. After they had reached a certain height, they signaled to the belayers. One belayer, a lean and wiry Rovčani, turned to the other men and said, “My lords, my brothers, we are ready to climb.”

It was nothing like climbing the mountain at the Jiardasian border had been, all those years ago. That incline had been gentler, its inhabitants less belligerent; and, at the time Marco and the Rat were there, no snow or ice impeded their ascent. One could not simply walk up this mountain, even if one crouched low. Each man attached a ladder-like device to a hammered-in piton, climbed it till he reached the next piton, pulled up the ladder, and began again.

Marco, steadfastly not looking down, drowned out any fears in his head in a steady patter of _I am not afraid. I shall not be afraid._ His body fell into the rhythm of the climb; it remained arduous, but the exercise was warming. He remembered reading that, in the archaic Samavian which had left more traces in these peaks than anywhere else in the country, _kragujevac_ meant a hawk’s aerie. The duchy was well named, he thought.

He had lost track of the hours and minutes, but by the time most of them had reached a ledge well up the face and Dragan was saying quietly behind him, “We are here,” the dark of the sky had just begun to fade.

A sharp, deafening sound that Marco instantly recognized as a rifle shot split the air above their heads. They all flattened themselves against the rock face or the ledge below them as best they could. But one of the Orlovići cried out, and then he was gone, a dark splash on the snow where his feet had just stood. There was a sound of something heavy tumbling down the side of the mountain. Čedomir Orlović stood silent, but his broad, ruddy face was rigid with fury.

“Bastards,” Rudolf snarled, his pistol already to hand. He waited, eyes narrowed, as unmoving as hard ice, until motion flickered above them. He fired. On the heels of the report Marco thought he heard the faintest of thuds. He might have convinced himself he’d imagined it until the rifle tumbled into their midst. They all ducked away from it, lest it fire on impact. Then Orlović picked it up and lay it flush against the rock face. His anger seemed to be giving way to a cold satisfaction — and a bitter determination.

The next few minutes saw them all piling on one another’s shoulders and pulling themselves up the last ten or so feet into the opening where the outlook guard had stood. They didn’t bother keeping silent now; they exhorted one another, they grunted with effort, they bellowed with rage as they reached the aperture of rock and ice.

As their fingers gained purchase on the rim, fists hammered them and knives were driven into them. A burly Harambašić fell to the ledge below. Another of Orlović’s men grabbed his own assailant’s wrist, pulled him off his feet, and hurled him into the air behind him. The traitor slipped over the ledge; his howl of terror echoed down the mountainside.

Dragan and Buća had made it over the rim and were, Marco guessed, holding off the cavern’s defenders with pistols as the rest of their party swarmed up and in. Marco heard a few more shots as he gained the rim. By the time he had swung himself over and planted his feet on the cavern floor, Buća lay face down on it, as did one of Gavrilo Rovčani’s men, as did two of the enemy. A white-faced Dragan was kneeling beside one of the latter, pulling both pistol and knife from the dead man’s belt; his own pistol, back in his belt, still smoked.

Marco’s eyes had long since adjusted to the pre-dawn darkness on the slope, but the inside of the cavern was even darker; he could not tell precisely how large it was. With Dragan’s men now swarming into it, it would be a singularly bad place in which to fire a pistol. Instead he slid his dagger from its thigh sheath — and, almost immediately, found himself looking into eyes that were nearly black and that shimmered with hatred and bloodlust.

For a while afterward, all motion around Marco was a blur. By contrast, his deadly dance with the man before him — a man of similar build, a bit shorter, dressed about the same though with no balaclava under his cap, wielding his own dagger — seemed as slow as tree sap and as clear as a droplet of rain. The same calm sense of purpose that had overtaken him in the dacha as he faced down Uroš was with him once again, as were certain hard-honed instincts and skills he thought he had left forever behind on the battlefield.

They circled one another warily. Chin down, hands held out before his own throat and breast, Marco kept his weight on the balls of his feet, watching the other man’s eyes and hands, watching him for weaknesses, as the other watched him in the same way. 

Then the traitor jerked his dagger arm up and away from his body. Marco lunged forward. His enemy’s feint ended in a slash that made ribbons of Marco’s furred coat sleeve at his shoulder. It didn’t cut into his flesh, but his arm tingled with the force of the blow.

Marco ignored the attending jolt of anger and lunged again. Just before the point of his dagger could find the hollow beneath his enemy’s jaw, the other dagger rose, blocking his thrust with the ring of steel on steel. He pulled back just as the other man lunged at him, but not far enough. The tip of the dagger ripped through his balaclava along his jawline, and this time he felt the sting of welling blood.

 _Seize your anger. Shape it to your purpose._ He felt his heartbeat, strong and steady, his breath smooth. The world about him was crystalline. The answer lay in his hand.

Tightly, nimbly, he feinted right. When the other man raised his dagger to match him, Marco drove his left fist into the man’s throat. As the man gasped hoarsely, the tip of Marco's dagger once again rose to the underside of his jaw and, this time, sank in. Blood splashed over both of them as Marco pulled the blade free and the man began to sink.

But he was still dangerous. Marco let the man’s left fist flail against him as with his own left hand he caught his enemy’s dagger wrist, pulled the arm high, drove his own weapon through layers of clothing into the armpit beneath, and twisted. Another spurt of blood soaked his own coat as the man fell like a stone, the glow of rage already dying in his eyes.

Marco dropped with him to the floor to free his dagger, which he wiped on the dead man’s coat, and then he stood again. Several other men had fallen, men on both sides, but all who were still on their feet were on his own side. Some were kneeling beside wounded traitors and binding their hands behind their backs. The sky outside had continued to lighten, but the sun had yet to rise.

_Jem._

Fear, entirely absent during the dagger fight, pierced his whole body like an iron maiden of ice. There was now enough light in the cavern to see the entrance at its rear; he darted to it, and then down a natural corridor in the gloom of which rushlight sconces flickered.

Darkened rooms, whether hollowed out by nature or man, flanked the corridor. Marco glimpsed in one a table strewn with playing cards. Chairs stood around it; coats and other garb hung from pegs in the wall. Another, the largest, appeared to be stacked high with pallets. A third was piled with grain sacks, jugs set on the floor about them; yet another seemed to serve as a general storeroom.

At the back of the corridor was a fifth room, the smallest by far. In its gloom, Marco could make out a chamberpot and a pallet on the floor. On the pallet lay a draped form, its back to Marco. A form that did not appear to be moving at all.

The calm voices of memory on which Marco so often drew were not there for him now. The only word in his mind was _no, no, no, no_ as he rushed into the fetid room, knelt beside the pallet, and, as gently as he could, turned over the person who lay on it.

“Rat! Jem? _Jem!_ ”

The Rat made no reply. His chest rose and fell only shallowly. Still naked, he did not shiver so much as convulse, an alarming heat emanating from his skin against Marco’s palms.

Marco’s rush of relief guttered out in a blast of pure fury. He took a deep breath to master it and, with a gentleness he was surprised he was capable of just then, gathered the Rat into his arms, blanket and all. It was the only thing between his bare flesh and the marrow-drilling cold of the cave. Then he rose, bore the Rat from the room—

_…you finally carrying me across the threshold...and me not wearing white…_

—and, a moment later, laid him across the card-strewn table. One of the garments hanging on a peg was a long cloak; odd garb to find on a steep slope, he thought. He took it down and folded the Rat into it from shoulders to feet, leaving the befouled blanket on the table. And, once more, he gently hefted the weight of his captain.

He returned to the entry into the outer cavern just as pallid rays of winter sun had begun to spill into it. One of them caught both his face and the Rat’s in its diluted light. Heads turned in their direction, and conversation ceased. 

Marco looked down into a face that was a mass of bruises held together by a mortar of fever-red skin. Both the Rat’s eyes had been blackened. His nose was swollen and bent; dried blood had caked around his nostrils. His lips were bloodied as well, the lower one split. Blood had run down his forehead into his matted hair.

 _“Mein lieber Gott,”_ Rudolf hissed.

Dragan said nothing, but all the blood drained from his face, and then its expression shifted into something that made the hairs on Marco’s nape stand on end. He might have outranked the man, but at that moment he hoped to God he never, ever seriously angered the second son of the Duke of Kragujevac.

A soft chuckle wormed its way into the silence. Marco looked down and saw the goat-faced man who had been at the dacha, sitting on the floor of the cavern. His face was battered, his hands bound behind him, but his laughter grew louder and his malicious grin broadened.

“Ah, _Your Majesty,_ ” he said, the words thick in his bloodied mouth, “here come you to collect your—”

Whatever word he’d had in mind never rose to his lips. Dragan, who had drawn back his heavily booted foot, kicked him hard in the ribs. There was an audible crack. The man doubled over, gasping and coughing.

Marco remembered something.

“Turn him around,” he ordered Dragan. The duke’s son grabbed the bound man by the shoulders and turned him so that his back faced Marco. A tepid ray of sun glinted off the ring on his right hand.

“My lord Dragan,” Marco said in a hard, cold voice. “I entrust to you, for the moment, the care of Captain Ratcliffe. There is some unfinished business between myself and this man.”

“Your servant, Your Majesty,” came the reply, rage boiling at the bottom of Dragan’s voice as Marco transferred the Rat into his arms. 

With a few sharp strides Marco closed the distance between himself and the bound man. He dropped to one knee, wrested the ring from the man’s finger with no gentleness whatsoever, and tucked it into the pocket of his slashed, bloodstained coat.

Then he put his own hands on the other man’s shoulders and spun him back around. “I believe I owe you this,” he said as casually as if he were discussing the weather, and then he punched the goat-faced man so hard in the mouth he could feel teeth loosen behind already swollen lips.

 

It was decided that Rudolf, Nemanjić, Čedomir Orlović, and a contingent of other mountain men would remain behind for the next several hours. The dead, ally and enemy, had to be counted, identified, and buried. The injured allies who did not require physicians still had to be patched up with whatever supplies could be dredged from the traitors’ storeroom. And, although the news would likely start to travel as soon as the descent began, some traitors might yet make their way up to the cavern and need to be apprehended.

Jakšić, Vraneš, Damjan Harambašić, and Gavrilo Rovčani would accompany Marco and Dragan back to the city, then head for the courthouse, where they would remand the captive traitors into legal custody and find scribes to take down their own testimonies while their memories were fresh. Dragan and Marco would join them there later to be likewise deposed. The rest of the uninjured men were free to leave, with the understanding that their clan leaders would seek them out if their testimonies were required as well.

About half the company made their painstaking way back down the mountainside, piton by piton. All the conspirators, hands still bound, were belayed down on ropes, the belayers not bothering overly much to spare even the injured ones from bruises or jolts. The Rat, bound into the cloak and also now wearing Marco’s mostly intact balaclava, was belayed down, too, but with the utmost gentleness and care, as was the Harambašić who had fallen from the cavern opening to the ledge. Then the rest of them descended.

The Rat and the Harambašić were bundled securely onto the backs of the two fastest ponies, upon which the two fastest riders leapt, taking off immediately for the teaching hospital in Kragujevac city. The traitors’ bound wrists were lashed to the ponies belonging to the _voivode_ , the merchant, and the two clan leaders, such that they would be forced to stagger behind the beasts all the way back into the city and to the courthouse. And then the men whose service was no longer needed that day jumped onto their own ponies and rode off, to be swallowed up in the cold vastness of the mountains.

As much as Marco would have liked to look over his shoulder and watch his goat-faced adversary stumbling over ten miles of ice and rock, gloating was beneath the dignity of a king. He had already indulged himself by paying the man back with his fist. He kept his bare face turned forward the entire ride back to Kragujevac city, thankful that the glacial northern wind was now at his back.

Morning traffic, foot and horse and even the odd motorcar, had begun in earnest when they gained the city square. Dragan and Marco clasped hands with the other four men, all of whom gave them deferential nods. The clan leaders’ opinions of Marco seemed to have risen significantly in the last several hours. Then Jakšić, Vraneš, Harambašić, and Rovčani turned toward the courthouse, dragging their unhappy captives behind them.

Somewhat more than an hour later, Marco leaned back into the sofa in Dragan’s study. He and Dragan, made ravenous by the morning’s efforts, had tucked away most of the generous breakfast the servants had left in chafing dishes in the dining room. Each of them then had a cursory wash. Marco exchanged his mountain garb for the clothes he had worn from Melzarr to Kragujevac and slipped the royal ring back onto his finger. Afterward, Dragan told the servants he and Marco would be withdrawing to the study, where they were to be left undisturbed.

“ _Šljivovica,_ Your Majesty?” Dragan held out a small glass of the pale-gold spirits. “I realize it’s still rather early in the day, but we’ve had quite a day already.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Marco took it from him and sipped. Exertion and warm clothing had kept him from being chilled to the bone, but the spirits kindled a pleasant glow in his mouth, throat, and belly just the same.

“I’d like the prisoners transferred to Melzarr as soon as possible so that their trials can get underway,” he said, resting the glass on his thigh with his hand around it. “Obviously, any eyewitness testimony recorded at the courthouse here will be used in the trials.”

Dragan was silent for a moment as he set the cap back onto the decanter. Then he said, “I am sorry, Your Majesty. They will be questioned here, at the courthouse to which they have just been taken. I will take part in that questioning.” The Samavian word he used for _questioning_ had broader, and less-pleasant, implications than the simple making of inquiries.

“I beg your pardon?” Marco demanded, sitting up straight and placing the glass on a side table.

“All these outrages happened in my duchy, Your Majesty. I claim lord’s privilege in overseeing their prosecution. Furthermore, I am an aggrieved property owner in this matter: These men broke into my house, assaulted my guests, abducted one of them, damaged my property, and stole property belonging to other people. And they killed the Count of Jagodina, a nobleman and an excellent friend to me, and I grieve him deeply.”

“It all may have happened in your duchy and in your house,” Marco retorted, “but they conspired against a king, they assaulted said king and his companion, they abducted said companion, and they stole royal property. These are capital crimes, not for a regional jurisdiction to handle.” His voice hardened. “And I do _not_ countenance torture, nor suffer it to be practiced any longer in my realm.”

“Your Majesty,” Dragan said, quietly but emphatically. “Because of the political motivations behind the criminal acts in question, I cannot trust that nobles who are hostile to you and the Rat will not acquit these sons of whores. Their confessions are absolutely necessary. My honor is at stake — as are peace and order in my lands. You may have impressed the clan leaders this morning, but you saw last night with your own eyes that they look to me as their ultimate authority. Not you.”

Marco rose from the sofa. He might never have had a sip of the _šljivovica_ ; for the third time that morning icy anger coursed in his veins. Slowly he strode toward Dragan, until their noses were nearly touching, and in a menacingly soft voice he said, “You have sworn fealty to me, my lord. I do believe this includes obedience to my word.”

Dragan stood where he was, not blinking nor dropping his eyes from Marco’s. This in and of itself was insubordination; just now, too petty an act thereof for Marco to care.

At last, Dragan said, “With all due respect, my lord and liege — and that is no empty phrase, for I have great respect for you — if you stay my hand in this, I will be unable to lend you any worthwhile support toward the goal of reform, in either a legal capacity or in the capacity of brute force.”

Marco smiled. “Are you threatening me, my lord?”

Dragan flushed an angry red. “No, Your Majesty. It is no threat. It is a simple observation. I will have my hands full keeping order in Kragujevac, city and countryside alike, especially with Jovan Buća no longer at my side. And even if seeking help from you would not undermine my authority here in my own duchy and with nobles elsewhere in Samavia… precisely what help would your own army be, Your Majesty? Melzarr is ninety miles away. Its fighting men don’t know these mountains, and many likely have no experience at all with mountain fighting.”

The bluster drained out of Marco in one harsh breath. He closed his eyes; he was suffused still with anger but also now with shame. When he opened them again, he saw Dragan looking at him with sympathy that verged on pity. For the burdens of the crown he carried? For his naïveté? Both? Whichever was true, he thought for a moment he would rather have the duke’s second son look upon him with blinding rage.

“Forgive me,” he said curtly. “I am eager to see justice done in a manner that will best serve Samavia.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Dragan said, his tone inscrutable. After a moment, he added, “For what it’s worth, I think it would be perfectly meet to have them sent down to Melzarr for a public execution. I would humbly request that, afterward, at least a few of the bodies be sent back here for display. Or their heads, at least.”

It took Marco a great deal of effort to repress a shudder. “I will oblige you in this, my lord."

 

Early the next morning, he and the four Palace Guards swung up onto their own horses and rode not north again, but west, for a mountain that sat on the border between Samavia and Jiardasia.

He was not ready to return to Melzarr. His dearest companion lay at death’s door, and his own queen bristled with hostility toward him. In the last twenty-four hours he had survived a fight to the death, bowed to ugly political realities, and sat through a deposition that was by turns tedious and newly enraging.

As if all that were not enough, he had endured an hours-long, _šljivovica_ -soaked dinner during which Dragan and his surviving friends waxed morose over the slain Count of Jagodina and paid tribute to him with endless verses of traditional Kragujevački songs, every man singing off key. Even Rudolf, who had not known Buća from Adam, raised toast after toast to him, tossed down glass after glass of Schnapps, and added his own wretched singing voice to the choruses. And, because they were toasting “our fearless King Ivor” and singing songs to him, too, Marco sensed that leaving the table before any of the rest did would have insulted them gravely. He was forced to wait until Nemanjić had pitched forward over his cup, Vraneš was leaning back in his chair snoring, and the rest were too inebriated to notice Marco getting up to leave.

There had been a bright spot, that of his visit to the injured Harambašić in his bed at the teaching hospital. The man, whose right arm and leg were in traction, was mortified that not only could he not bow to Marco but he had only his left arm to offer in greeting. Marco tactfully waved away the superstitious worry, inquired how the Harambašić was faring, and praised him and his clan effusively. Though he would be doing no more climbing for several months, the Harambašić was faring well, as it turned out. His clan, with the help of their lord Dragan, would pay the cost of his treatment. Having observed Marco’s climb to the cavern and later heard about his exploits therein, he grinned and said, “Not badly done for a flatlander, Your Majesty.”

But that did not even begin to balance the rest of it — especially as the doctors at the hospital would not let him visit the still-unconscious Rat. Now Marco needed a peaceful place where he could think, meditate, and pray.

The western winds were not balmy at this time of year, but they did not sting his bare face as the northern ones would. Once more, he wore mountain garb, although the tattered coat had been left behind and his greatcoat sat over the layers of woolen shirts. The cost of the garments was so trifling to Dragan that calling them a gift, he had said with a wave of his hand, would have been an insult to his liege.

The little clearing on the hillside was clotted with snow both fresh and packed. Marco wasn’t minded to stop there in any event; without the Rat at his side, there was no point. He led his men higher up the mountainside. With no ferns, leaves, or scrub at this time of year, the little path to the church high above was much less obscured than it would have been in high summer.

Neither Sjaj nor the Guards’ mounts were as suited to the climb as native ponies would have been; still, they made their way upward with little complaint. The air grew colder as they emerged above treeline. The sun was behind them as they approached the crag; the light picked out the rough unevenness of the stones from which the tiny church perched on the crag had been built.

Further up the mountainside, Marco remembered well, there was the hidden cave with its sturdy door, the centuries-old gathering place of the Forgers of the Sword. He wondered if, fourteen years later, the cave were still in use at all. But his curiosity could be slaked another time, with the Rat at his side. If the Rat lived.

They reined in alongside the church. The even tinier building where the priest slept, little more than a shed, yet stood behind it. Marco wondered if the wizened old priest who had welcomed him and the Rat as they brought him the news of the lamp’s lighting was still alive.

As if on cue, the door to the outbuilding opened, and out walked a priest. He was thick bodied and broad shouldered; his hair was dark, as was his sparse beard that did not seem to want to come in fully. Behind it was the soft face of one who had barely if at all attained manhood. He wore a heavy cloak over his long black cassock and rugged boots beneath it, but he did not cover his head in the biting cold.

He stopped before Sjaj with a gentle smile, then dropped to one knee in the snow. “Your Majesty.”

“Please, Father, rise,” Marco said. It was odd, to be calling a lad probably ten years his junior by that title. He wondered how many warrior-priests had died in the fighting, and how many in the Great Sickness, that such a distinguished chapel — any chapel, really — would be overseen by little more than a boy.

The young priest rose, still smiling, absently brushing snow from the front of his cloak. “How may I serve you, Your Majesty?” he asked.

“I seek a quiet spot in which to contemplate God and my own sins,” Marco said. “My men are free to do so, or not to do so, in the meanwhile, but I am sure they would welcome respite from the cold. We have our own supplies and will not tax your own.”

The priest shook his head. “It is no burden, to feed my lord and liege and four of his men. I can find corn for your horses as well, and fetch well water for them.” Marco tried to insist otherwise, but the cassocked youth had already turned from him and was headed toward the old well.

Marco dismounted, as did the Palace Guards. He handed Sjaj’s reins to the nearest one and walked into the church, stopping in the nave. When he and the Rat had last been here, it had been night, and the interior of the church had been lit by a solitary candle. Now the early-afternoon light, the strongest the light would be all day, came in through the stained-glass windows to gild the wall of icons that hid the altar from view. It glinted off the intricate carvings of the gates in the wall and the crosses atop the gates.

The young priest came into the church, the four Palace Guards trailing him. One of them followed him into a small room off the nave. The other three passed Marco and stopped at the wall of icons. Twice, each man crossed himself in the Orthodox manner, bowed with right hand extended downward, kissed one of the icons, crossed himself again, bowed again. The first of these three Guards turned away and walked back to the nave; the other two followed, one by one. Each man stood apart from the others and from Marco; each stood and prayed, either silently or with mumbled prayers; each occasionally knelt and touched his forehead to the floor between his braced palms.

Marco moved slowly toward the wall of icons, approaching the Holy Gates at its center. He stepped onto the little platform before the Gates where folk took Holy Communion; he kissed the icon of the Archangel Gabriel on the left gate, then that of the Holy Mother Maria, the _Theotokos_ , on the right. Then he dropped to his knees before them and, as his Guards had done, splayed his palms against the platform and touched his forehead to it between them.

Still kneeling, he lifted his head and gazed upon the icons. Veneration had always been a comfort to him, a way to pull, if not actual holiness, then a sense of God’s presence into his soul. God was certainly present in this little house built to Him, he thought, but he could draw scant comfort from that presence today.

Because of his decisions and actions, the Rat might die, no matter how urgent the need for reform. He had killed a man today, and that it was in self-defense seemed not to matter. He had taken petty vengeance upon a bound man whom he could have simply left to the wheels of justice. For all that he had been king eight years, he did not fully grasp all the subtleties of politics that he should. As king, he could not even prevent the commission of torture in his own realm. His queen despised him, might very well set his children against him. And, by the tenets of his own faith, he could not blame her, because he had lain with another man.

He bowed his head again. _Please, Holy Father, please, Bearer-of-God. Shelter my loved ones and my country from my folly. Help me see with clear eyes. Help me choose the path of righteousness, or, if it is closed to me, at least the path of least evil. Help me be the king Samavia deserves, the husband Paulina Terveova deserves, the friend and liege Jeremy Ratcliffe deserves._

He heard the footfalls behind him, but they barely registered until they had stopped just beyond him. He heard the young priest’s high tenor: “Christ is amidst us.”

“He is and shall be,” Marco replied huskily.

The priest knelt to his right, youth giving him a fluidity that belied his bulk. Marco looked up, gazed upon mild brown eyes and the placid smile of before. The priest’s voice dropped to the softness just above a whisper.

“Be strong, Ivor Fedorović. There are many who stand behind you. It may not feel so, but you do God’s work, in your own way. God knows your heart; you have ridden all the way here to open it to Him, have you not? You have offered your sins up to Him, and you are cleansed of them.”

Marco went very still on his knees. “Thank you, Father,” he said quietly, his tone carefully neutral.

The priest leaned forward and kissed Marco on his right cheek. Marco turned that he might press his lips to the young man’s left cheek. They kissed one another again on opposite cheeks, then a third time on the initial ones. Then Marco began to rise, and the priest along with him.

They entered the small room off the nave where, now, all four Guards sat at a small table, dipping into bowls of soup accompanied by brown bread and cups of water. Marco joined them, waving his hand to ease their anxieties about taking a meal with their sovereign. Like his Guards, he made short work of the bowl and crust put before him. Before long the priest was walking them back out to the churchyard, where their horses stood tethered and under blankets.

As they rode away, the priest stood smiling, his right palm in the air in farewell. Marco could not safely glance backward as his and his men’s horses picked their way down the rough icy path, but he imagined the young man standing in the churchyard for a long time, arm raised, after they had all disappeared down the mountainside.

 

They entered Melzarr as the sun was setting. As they reined in before the palace’s front gates, a messenger approached them.

“Your Majesty! Captain Ratcliffe is awake and asking for you. Dr. Kovic wanted you to know as soon as possible.”

Marco frowned as if he’d been told the Rat had been flown to the moon. “Captain Ratcliffe is in Melzarr? He was at the hospital in Kragujevac city early yesterday morning.”

“Yes, my lord, but the physicians there brought his fever down with quinine, and then they decided he would best recuperate closer to home under the care of a doctor familiar with him. Lord Dragan had a fast rider bring him to the Royal Hospital.”

Marco steeled himself to keep from pitching sidelong off Sjaj in the wave of relief that flooded him. “Thank you,” he said to the messenger. To the four Guards who had ridden with him for the last two days, he said, “You have had a long journey, and you have all served me well. Send me two fresh Guards to accompany me to the hospital, and go and take your rest until tomorrow.”

Not a quarter hour later he stood in an echoing tiled corridor that reeked of carbolic acid. A short and swarthy man in a white coat was approaching him, a mousy young woman in a nurse’s uniform at the doctor’s heels. They stopped before him and sketched out, respectively, a bow and curtsy.

“Your Majesty,” Dr. Kovic said curtly. Marco figured the man’s usual annoyed look was vastly preferable to one of pained sympathy.

“I understand Captain Ratcliffe is awake, and that his fever has been eased,” he said.

“That is correct.” Though the royal physician was Samavian born and bred, he had studied medicine in Germany for nearly a decade, and he tended to clip the words of his native tongue. “However, he will be kept here at least several more days. His nose was broken, as were several ribs and a finger. He is fortunate none of the ribs pierced his lungs. A tooth was knocked out as well, and he has numerous contusions and lacerations. Above all, he is quite weak from having lain naked in the cold, in his own filth, for several days without adequate food or water. He was brought to the hospital in Kragujevac city just in time.” Kovic scowled as though Marco himself had been keeping the Rat in a squalid dungeon.

“May I see him, Doctor?”

“You may, Your Majesty, but I strongly counsel you keep the visit brief, then take your leave to let him rest.”

 _As if he’ll let me,_ Marco thought, but he merely said, “Thank you, Dr. Kovic. Could someone please lead me to his room?”

“Sonja, if you please,” Kovic said, and half-bowed in Marco's direction. "Your Majesty.”

The mousy nurse turned on her heel, and Marco followed her down the corridor, through a door, up a stairway split by a landing, through a second door, and down another corridor. She stopped midway at a closed door and knocked briskly.

“Come in,” came the reply, muffled by the door.

Sonja swung the door open, nodded to the room’s sole occupant, made another rudimentary curtsy to Marco, and departed. Marco entered the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

In the iron-framed hospital bed, the Rat half-sat up, half-reclined against several pillows in well-starched cases. Adhesive plaster covered his nose; his lower lip remained swollen. He wore a loosely buttoned cardigan under which bandages swathing his midsection were visible. Whatever bruises Marco could see had begun to turn the sickly yellow green of healing — including those around his eyes, beacons of light-grey fire that were fixed hard on Marco.

Marco pulled the visitor’s chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down. He covered the Rat’s right hand, the one without the broken finger, with his own. The Rat turned his hand upward in Marco’s and squeezed it in reply.

Finally, Marco said, “You look a fright.”

“Thank you, Marco, that’s very kind of you.” The Rat’s voice was blurry from the wounds to his mouth and with fatigue.

“Are you in pain?”

“No.” It was said so quickly Marco knew it to be a lie. He said nothing, wondering if the Rat would admit otherwise, but the set of his captain’s jaw suggested he would not.

Instead, the Rat said, “I was told that you… retrieved me, as it were.”

Marco smiled weakly. “Me, along with a few dozen Kragujevački. And Rudolf of Vienna, if you can believe it.”

The Rat smiled, then winced, putting his injured hand to his injured mouth. “Rudolf, eh? Dragan didn’t mention him. Didn't realize until you spoke his name how much I miss the old reprobate.”

The smile abruptly faded, and when he spoke again the lightheartedness was gone from his voice. “I heard you call me, you know, and felt you gather me up. But by then I’d no idea what was real and what was a fever dream.” A few heartbeats passed in silence, and then he added, softly, “Thank you, my lord and liege.”

Marco’s hand tightened around the Rat’s, and the Rat pressed back with more strength than Marco would have thought possible in his condition.

“You are more than welcome, my vassal.”

The Rat’s lacerated lip quirked. “Your vassal. Bloody good job I did protecting you, didn’t I?”

“A dozen against two, and one of the two without working legs? I’d say you acquitted yourself quite well, helping me with that great midden heap on legs… Uroš, was it?”

“Bloody Uroš," the Rat muttered. “Worst of the lot by far. Except for that goat-faced sod Rado.”

After a brief moment, Marco asked, “Do you have the strength, right now, to tell me all that happened?”

The Rat’s eyes narrowed. “Kovic told you not to tire me out, didn't he? Don’t worry about that. Unless you’re afraid of that white-coated martinet?”

“Perhaps a little,” Marco said, deadpan. The Rat smiled, then winced and touched his lower lip again.

“Rat, if your mouth pains you too much to talk right now—”

“I’ll be fine,” the Rat said sharply. “I assume he catalogued my injuries for you.” Marco clenched his jaw and nodded. “So you know what they did to me.” The Rat laughed, a dark and angry sound. “Could have been worse. A few of them joked about…” He stopped abruptly, his face paling. “… _making use of me,_ if you will, one after the other.”

Marco’s stomach percolated queasily, and his head was light with rage.

“Of course, that would have been a mortal sin for them. Father Atanas was gravely concerned for the _souls_ of his men. He and his god had no quarrel with them thrashing seven bells out of me.”

“Father Atanas?” Marco asked sharply. “There was a priest at the base?”

The Rat was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “No one’s told you yet who was pulling the strings?”

Marco looked bewildered. “Not the nobles?”

“Oh, I’m sure there are nobles with their fine hands in this, although I never heard any of their names. It’s possible the rank and file didn’t know, either. But ultimately, noble or commoner, all of them answer to the Patriarch.”

Marco opened his mouth, then closed it. He wanted to ask if the Rat were absolutely sure, but the Rat’s expression was all the answer he needed.

“Why?”

The Rat smiled sardonically, wincing but this time not touching his torn lip. “Because reform would loosen the church’s grip on the poor. When a man has to scrabble for every meal, he’ll take whatever help he can find, no matter the strings attached. In London I saw the likes of the Patriarch in half a dozen incarnations: the Church of England termagants, the Papists, the Exeter Hall tabbies, the Sallies, half a dozen tent shouters out of Wales at any given time who’d given up preying on sheep for preying on their fellow man — and all of them calling it ‘charity.’” His voice had turned corrosively bitter.

Marco put his face in his hand, passed that hand through his hair, stared at the floor.

The Rat continued: “The Patriarch has his sources, and through them he knew there were clans in the mountains of Kragujevac still loyal to Dragan’s late brother Ognjan, men still hoping their own capitol could displace Melzarr and their duke, you. Or, rather, whomever they could place on the throne after they’d murdered Dragan and his father. Atanas was one of them, and the Patriarch knew that. Atanas organized a meeting of the clan leaders with a Metropolitan, who persuaded them to strike against us, promising them the restoration of Kragujevac city as capitol.”

Another vitriolic laugh. “And those unlettered, inbred simpletons _believed_ him. Including Atanas, who should have known better. Probably never considered that, at the first whiff of suspicion, the Patriarch would simply let them all dangle at the ends of ropes. Including Atanas. Who, again, should have known better.”

Marco expelled a harsh breath. “How many were there, in all?”

“Altogether I saw about two dozen of them, between the ones at the dacha and others who were at the mountain base. There are others I didn’t see… or perhaps I did see them. I have no idea. After the first day and a half I probably couldn’t have told you my own name.”

“Apparently they didn’t much care if fever carried you off while you still had use to them as a pawn,” Marco snapped.

“Oh, but they threw a blanket over me. That was considerate of them.”

The Rat fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, the rage that had been mounting in his voice seemed to be contained, and he spoke with a weary flatness. 

“They did give me water and bread and a little cheese, but I hadn’t much of an appetite the whole time, and my mouth hurt too much anyway. There came a point when I couldn’t rise from the pallet to use the pot. Before long — when I was conscious, which was less and less often — I didn’t care.” His hand had begun to tremble under Marco’s, and Marco clutched it tighter.

The Rat closed his eyes. “Christ. I need a bloody cigarette. That bastard Kovic won’t let me have any.”

“With good reason,” Marco said sternly.

“Obviously I haven’t suffered enough for his taste. Is my greatcoat still in Kragujevac, or did you bring it back to the palace? The case and the lighter are in—”

“I’m not bringing you your damned cigarettes, Rat. You’ve gone without for the better part of a week, you can wait a few more days.”

The Rat was smiling again. “You _are_ afraid of him, aren’t you?”

Marco sighed. “I’m glad to learn that your ordeal hasn’t robbed you of your desire to vex me, nor your remarkable facility at same.” He began to rise from the chair. “But I suspect I _am_ taxing you by making you relive the last several days.”

The Rat looked up as Marco stood. Something in his eyes impelled Marco to sit back down, this time on the edge of the bed, and ever so gently encircle the Rat’s shoulders with his arms and press his cheek against the top of his captain’s head. In turn he felt powerful arms wrap tightly around his own shoulders and upper back.

After a long moment, the Rat released him, and Marco straightened again.

“And, Rat, if you’re in pain, _ask for morphine,_ damn you. If they won’t give you enough, tell them I’ll have them flogged in the city square.”

The Rat winced again as he grinned. “Now I’m of a mind to ask Kovic for enough to drop an elephant, just to hear him refuse me and be able to tell him that in reply. You’re too good to me, my lord and liege.”

 

Upon his return to the palace, well after the supper hour, Marco asked a servant to bring a tray of cold meat and bread, along with a glass of _šljivovica_ , to his study. He sat alone, sating his hunger, sipping the spirits, turning the Rat’s revelations over and over in his head. Afterward, he again drew his own bath. In neither study nor bathroom did anyone intrude upon him.

Once dried off, he slipped into a dressing robe and made his way to the royal bedchamber. It was as yet empty. As he approached the bed, in the far corner of Paulina’s side of the room he spied her portmanteau, the straps undone to reveal a stack of clothes within.

He shed the robe and climbed into bed, bone weary. Just before he drifted off to sleep, he heard light footfalls. They stopped abruptly, and were followed by a long exhalation, before resuming and drawing nearer. The last thing he perceived was the other side of the bed flexing under Paulina’s weight.

The next morning at breakfast, she remained distant, but he noticed her surreptitious glances of curiosity and worry. He greeted her civilly, he kissed each child on the forehead, but his churning thoughts left him little energy for anything except the food and coffee before him. 

And then in came a servant with yet another note, brought by a messenger who had ridden all night through the mountains. Suddenly Marco didn’t care whether he ate for the rest of the day. “Please excuse me,” he said as he rose, ignoring Paulina’s half-irritated, half-curious expression, and retreated once again to his study.

The note was from Dragan. Confessions had been extracted from a dozen traitors, he wrote, most notably one called Rado. Most of their faction had wished to restore Kragujevac city as Samavia’s capitol. They were allied with the Patriarch, who was motivated not only by desire to preserve his influence but by ferocious animosity toward the “heretical foreign sodomite” in Marco’s confidence. A search of both the cavern and the office of the small mountain church presided over by the priest Atanas turned up letters and other evidence incriminating the Patriarch, two Metropolitans, and Atanas himself. Dragan concluded with a polite inquiry of Marco’s wishes for the subsequent disposition of the prisoners.

Marco threw the note onto the top of his desk. Last night, the news of the Patriarch’s duplicity had shocked him beyond emotional reaction. Now he was angry, and deeply so. Greed, treachery, and a willingness to do violence were bad enough from the nobility. He hadn’t expected the same from a man of God.

He thought of how often he had visited the court chapel as prince, then king, kissing the elaborate icons and then prostrating himself before them, watched by the Patriarch. He thought of how many times the man had given him, given his children, Holy Communion. He thought of how many times he had laid the kiss of peace on the Patriarch’s bearded cheeks and the Patriarch returned it upon his own smoothly shaven face. Had those been the kisses of Judas, the Patriarch all the while plotting to have him beaten and the Rat stolen away?

 _Probably never considered that, at the first whiff of suspicion, the Patriarch would simply let them all dangle at the ends of ropes,_ the Rat had said. _Oh,_ Your Beatitude, _they won’t be the only ones twisting in the wind,_ Marco thought through a black cloud of fury.

This time he saw the study door open. “Come in,” he said, not bothering to mitigate the anger in his voice.

Paulina shut the door behind her and stood before his desk. Her face gave little away.

“You wanted to read the note, didn’t you?” He picked it up again and handed it to her. “Go ahead.”

She read. He watched the color leach out of her face. She seemed to stare at the piece of paper longer than it would have taken her to read it. Finally, her expression still tightly schooled, she set it back down on the desk.

He thought about asking her if she would still like to solicit the Patriarch’s advice on the moral edification of their children. But, no matter what the Rat might think, he wasn’t _that_ much of an utter fool.

Finally she said, “I understand the Rat was grievously abused, and quite ill when you found him.”

“He was," Marco said curtly. “He is mending.”

“I am glad to hear that.”

Again, she walked to the chair against the wall and sat down in it. Again, she studied the backs of her hands. Again, a long silence ensued. Marco’s anger slowly ebbed.

At last he said quietly, “How much of what troubles you is sin, Paulina, and how much of it is something else entirely?”

Her eyes still on her hands, she said, “You cannot deny that Scripture deems it a sin, Marco, no matter what sort of man the Patriarch has turned out to be.”

“No, I cannot.” He sighed. “All I can say is that what went between us, the Rat and me, was more than just pleasure. There was nothing tawdry in it, nor predatory. I am a blasphemer, I suppose, but I cannot reconcile what Scripture says with what my own heart tells me.”

She looked up. “Do you love him?”

He blinked. He remembered the Rat’s words, six years ago: _Will you let me do this, my lord and liege? Show you my love and my fealty this way?_ But, this time, neither of them had spoken the word, nor had he even thought it. He wondered why.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

She laughed, quietly and shakily. “I almost wish it were another woman.”

“Why? So you could flagellate yourself anew about having ‘failed’ me, when you have done no such thing?”

A look of pain crossed her face. “Because I could compete with another woman, Marco.”

He took a deep breath. “Paulina. I love you every bit as well. You do not compete with the Rat for my affections or my regard. Did you fear I would actually set you aside for him?”

She didn’t reply, but the rigid set of her face, the tension in every line of her body, was answer enough.

“I don’t think the Rat would look quite as good in your gowns as you do,” Marco said. A corner of her mouth pulled upward. “And he and I would have quite a time trying to produce any more little princes and princesses on our own.”

She was smiling slightly more now, but also shaking her head. “There’s the crux of it, Marco. I am your lawful queen, I am the mother of your children, but how do I know the Rat is not the one who holds your heart?”

“Because _both_ of you do. You cannot replace him, but nor can he replace you.” He paused. “And you know this, but he has always thought the world of you. He does not know that you have been in distress for the last several days. If he did, he would have told me at the hospital how much he grieved to be the cause of it.”

“But,” she said softly, “neither of you grieves it so much that you will forswear one another.”

“Darling…” He found himself struggling for words. “I could tell you a falsehood, that I will never lie with him again, and he could tell you the same lie on his part. For six years, I believed I would, indeed, never lie with him again. Whether one would say I fell into sin or I tore the scales from my eyes… I don’t think it matters.”

They sat, apart and silent, for a while longer.

“Would it be of any comfort to you,” Marco asked, “to sit with the both of us, somewhere private, to talk this matter over? Not right now, obviously, but when he is out of the hospital and a bit more healed, and I have had the chance to speak to him first?”

She sighed. “…Possibly. I don’t know, Marco. To be truthful, in a way I do not even know what to make of all this. It is nothing I have ever expected.”

He rose from his chair, walked to hers, placed his hand on her shoulder. He expected her to flinch; she did not, but neither did she cover his hand with hers, as she might have, not very long ago.

He would have to be satisfied with that, he thought. He stooped to kiss her cheek. Again, she neither recoiled nor responded. This time it was he who left her to sit and closed the study door ever so quietly behind him.

 

A week later, Sjaj once again made his way up the side of a mountain on the Jiardasian border. This time he carried two riders, one seated pillion behind the other.

“That glade?” Marco said, pointing to the snow-covered clearing. “That was where we slept when first we entered Samavia, all those years ago. We were filthy, hungry, and falling down with exhaustion. A bed of ferns was like a bed of goose feathers, just then.” He saw no need to tell Paulina that he and the Rat had been back to that glade as men, and that they had done much more than sleep there.

“And when you woke, you climbed to the church?” she asked.

“To the church, and then to the secret hiding place of the Forgers of the Sword.”

Sjaj climbed the path, now familiar to him, without difficulty, and then they were blinking in the sun that was slowly but surely gathering its strength for the spring. Marco had heard that the old folk of the countryside predicted it would be a fine spring and summer, with a bountiful harvest to follow. He hoped they were right.

They gained the churchyard and reined in. Out of the church door walked the young priest, smiling beatifically.

“Your Majesties.” Once again he knelt in the snow.

“Please, Father, stand,” Marco said as he dismounted. He was struck by an odd, fey sense he should be the one kneeling to this youth instead, but it faded as abruptly as it had come, leaving him faintly bewildered.

The priest stood, still smiling. “Does my lady need a hand down from her mount?”

“I am fine, but I thank you for your offer, Father,” Paulina said, dismounting smoothly before even Marco could offer his own hand.

The youth took Sjaj's bridle. “I will see to him, Your Majesties. The one you seek is in the small room off the nave.”

Both of them reflexively crossed themselves as they moved through the nave. Marco’s eyes were drawn to the wall of icons; he felt an urge to venerate them again, and by Paulina’s anxious glance in their direction he sensed she did as well. But the saints, as it was said of them proverbially, were infinitely patient. They could wait.

At the table in the small room sat a figure whose greatcoat hung more loosely about his frame than it had two weeks before, despite the bandages wound about his midsection beneath a woolen shirt. The Rat’s finger also remained bandaged; the plaster on his now-crooked nose was gone. His bruises and cuts had been healing apace. His eyes, taking in both Marco and Paulina, were warm, but Marco caught the flickers of anxiety in them.

Paulina's face, by contrast, was cool; she regarded the Rat warily.

“I see that you are mending,” she said in English, rather stiffly. “I am glad of that. Marco told me of your ordeal. It is a shame upon this country, that any of its men would perpetrate such things upon you, and I am deeply sorry for it.”

The Rat, usually as informal with her in private as he was with Marco, inclined his head. “Thank you, my lady.”

She and Marco each took a seat. The young priest had left three cups, as well as a pitcher of water, on the table. Marco reached for the pitcher. “Let me,” the Rat said, stretching out his own hand, but Marco shook his head. He welcomed something to occupy his hands right now.

They were all quiet as Marco filled each cup and set it down. Paulina ignored hers. The Rat took his and sipped at it, eyes on the top of the table.

Finally he placed it down, looked up, and said, “Marco has told me… that you know…” He broke off there.

“Yes,” Paulina said, voice neutral, face taut.

There was a bit more silence, and then the Rat laughed, low and nervously.

“I am not sure how one goes about something like this. I suppose I should just say that I am sorry, _profoundly_ sorry, to have caused you any suffering.” He looked directly into her eyes, his own full of regard, pain, pleading. “I esteem you very much, Paulina. Marco could not have chosen better.”

Quietly, very quietly, she said, “But, as I said to Marco, you are not so sorry that you would promise me never to lie with him again.” A heartbeat, two heartbeats, passed. “Are you?”

The Rat flushed, looked down at the table again, and then turned his eyes back up to her.

“No,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “I love Marco as you do, my lady, every bit as much as you do. I am not grieved that he is not mine alone. That could never happen, and I would be a fool to wish it so.”

There was silence again. Paulina was staring at her hands again; this time she was twisting her own ring back and forth on her finger. Marco wondered for a heart-stopping moment whether she would take it off, place it on the table, and walk out of the room. But she gave up fiddling with it, and with the flood of relief came the realization that, even in pain and anger, she was not a fool of any kind.

Finally, she said, “I have the distinct feeling that an appeal to Scripture would have even less sway with you than with Marco.” Marco’s heart stopped again. How much did she know, in this wise?

Once more, the Rat laughed, quietly and with a shade of his usual cynicism this time. “The same Scripture which would bid you to stone your younger son to death in public for being sullen and rebellious? I am afraid not, my lady.”

Paulina flinched and paled. Marco’s eyebrows shot up. He knew the Rat had little use for faith, but he had never said anything quite that blunt to Marco.

“As much as I love Nikola,” Paulina said finally, “that _is_ sometimes a tempting solution.” Both men chuckled, and she allowed her mouth to rise slightly at the corners.

Then her smile faded. “So. I am being asked by a man who is not only not of my own faith, but not of any faith, it seems, for my blessing for him to continue to lie with my husband.” She paused. “Do I represent the current state of affairs accurately, Captain Ratcliffe?”

It was the Rat’s turn to flinch; just as he was usually informal with her in private, so was she with him. “Speaking as one who has sworn fealty to your husband as well as professed my love for him, it elides a great deal, emotionally speaking… but, yes, my lady, you have the gist of it.”

She blinked. “Well, you are honest to a fault. I will give you that.”

“May I please supply some of that… context, my lady?” the Rat asked her.

“You may.”

The Rat breathed in deeply. “I will tell you in truth, my lady, that I did not, have never, seduced or corrupted Marco. I have loved him since we were boys, too young to… well, not too young to _have_ such feelings, but too young to make heads or tails of them, let alone act on them. Thanks to him and his father, I have a good life. Thanks to him and his father, I _live,_ for that matter. I have had great affection for others, but… it has never been like this.”

Her chin was in her hands now. “And your current… man? Dragan of Kragujevac?” she asked.

The Rat looked surprised at this. He would tell Marco later, _Not surprised that she knew about Dragan. Surprised that she cared whether or not I deceived him — or you._

“I have never promised him my fidelity, my lady,” the Rat said. “I have been his lover, yes, for these past three years. I will continue to be his dear friend, his confidant, his brother-in-arms if he asks and to the best of my ability. But he knows, has long known, where my heart lies.” At the Rat’s last words, Marco’s heart stopped a third time. 

“He tells me,” the Rat continued, “that it is long past time for him to take a wife, that he might beget a son to be named Duke of Kragujevac when he himself is gone, and another son or two besides. ‘A nobleman is expected to wench,’ he said, ‘even by his lady, but I doubt I will find a bride in my duchy, or even in all of the country, who would countenance a man as my paramour. Few Samavian women are as well traveled and as understanding as our beloved Queen.’”

That last, the Rat said with a wry twist to the left corner of his mouth. Paulina’s cheeks pinkened, and Marco thought her features might have softened ever so slightly. 

“One more thing, my lady… Paulina…” This time his voice cracked on her name. “I would never, _ever,_ take liberties with or otherwise harm any of the children. Please. Know this, if nothing else. I am drawn to grown men, and grown men alone.”

She said nothing for a moment, then inclined her head ever so slightly. A silence stretched in the little room.

“My lady,” the Rat said once more, a new note of urgency in his voice. “I cannot precisely kneel to you—”

“Rat,” Marco interrupted sharply. “You’ve a chestful of broken ribs, this floor is hard and uncarpeted, and you’ve got to ride back to Melzarr."

Paulina looked puzzled. The Rat glared at Marco. “Yes, my lord and liege, I am aware of these things.” He then turned back to Paulina. “My lady, I would swear an oath of fealty to you, if you would let me, in my own limited way.”

Her expression changed from puzzled to outright bewildered, as well as faintly embarrassed. “I don’t think there is any need of that. You have sworn fealty to my husband; he is my lord as well as yours.”

“My lady, I would like to declare myself as something other than your adversary. I know I am not due your forgiveness, nor your permission, and I will not importune you by pleading for either. But I would be deeply grateful if you would let me pledge faith to you as best I know how.”

She blinked again and turned to Marco. Marco said, “I think there would be no harm in it, Paulina.”

“All right. Put out your hands, Rat.”

The Rat’s eyes flashed, stirring warm and, at this moment, uncomfortable memories in Marco, as he extended his clasped hands toward her and softly recited, “I, Captain Jeremy Francis Landon Ratcliffe, humbly offer up myself as a vassal unto my queen and the lady of my lord, Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova, Queen of Samavia.”

She enclosed his hands in hers. Her voice deepened with purpose and rang against the walls as she replied, “I, Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova, Queen of Samavia, accept you as my vassal, Captain Jeremy Francis Landon Ratcliffe." She paused. “What do you swear upon, captain?”

“I swear upon my honor and upon my life that I will ever be faithful to my lady, will keep my sword and my shield ever at her disposal, and will never cause her harm. This homage I will observe utterly, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit.”

She withdrew her hands. She seemed moved, and also a bit surprised at what had just transpired. The Rat’s expression was less one of relief than one of a man who has done all he can do and must now leave matters in the hands of fate.

“I’ve said as much to Marco,” Paulina said, “but I am still not entirely sure what to make of all this. I heard of such arrangements when I lived in Paris, but… that was Paris, not Melzarr, and none of the people in those arrangements were royalty.” She paused. “I am not sure how this situation will sit with me when Marco and I lie in bed together, when I see him with you in public, when a week has passed from now, a month from now, a year from now, ten years from now, God willing we shall all still live.”

“But you will not forbid…” the Rat said, and then trailed off.

She looked down at her hands again.

“No,” she said. “I do not see how I could, and… I am not minded to draw the church into this matter, for obvious reasons.” She paused, then continued, “Nor do I object to your continuing to act as an uncle to my and Marco’s children,” she said.

The Rat sighed, and this time his relief was palpable. “Thank you, my lady.”

“So,” she said, beginning to rise, “we seem to be done here. I should like to pray, I think, before we take our leave. Will you join me, Marco?”

“I will,” he said, rising. “Rat, I take it that Father—” He realized he had never asked nor been told the young priest’s name.

“Father Ivan,” the Rat said. “Yes, he will help me back onto Gavrana, and I will return to Melzarr in due time.”

Marco nodded. “We will see you there.” He turned away from the grey eyes that brimmed with too many emotions to name. With a hand on Paulina’s elbow, he guided her from the room.

They knelt, together, before the wall of icons. Marco touched his lips to the Archangel Gabriel, Paulina her own to the _Theotokos_. He pressed his forehead to the floor between his hands. He felt a warm palm against the back of his right hand, and he felt his eyes fill with tears.

_So much grace, of which this lowly sinner is not worthy. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Bearer-of-God. Thank you._

 

Three mornings later were the hangings.

Marco had made sure the hangman knew to tie his knots so that the drops would be short, the traitors’ necks broken immediately. If he could not spare his country from the practice of torture, he could at least see to it that his countrymen were not degraded by the titillation of public suffering under the guise of edification. That these wretches would lose their lives was penalty enough.

Each man, on the scaffold with the noose around his neck, was asked if he had any last words. Some gave their heads a single sharp jerk forward and back: _No._ Others shouted, “Kragujevac!” or “Duke Ognjan is dead, long live Duke Ognjan!” The Patriarch, the two implicated Metropolitans, and Father Atanas offered up ringing, florid prayers, eyes turned upward to Heaven.

The one named Rado, leaning his torture-broken body against the hangman’s apprentice, shouted, “Death to the sodomite on the throne!” His goat-like face was a rictus, his eyes furnaces of hatred. The crowd gasped. 

On the royal dais, robed and crowned, Marco paled but remained silent. He had anticipated that at least one traitor would levy the accusation.

He had not anticipated the stab of pity and guilt he felt, despite all he and the Rat had suffered at the hands of Rado and his collaborators, or what it would have cost Samavia had their plan succeeded. Even as Rado’s words echoed in his ears, it sickened Marco to acknowledge that the man had been tortured under his own law, and by his own vassal, no less.

He raised his hand, and the platforms beneath the traitors’ feet dropped away. Cracks were audible, as was the sound of bowels and bladders emptying in death. The square filled with utter, and eerie, silence, broken only by the creaking of pulleys.

To Marco’s left sat Paulina, in royal robes and circlet as well. Her features were a mask of regal impassivity, but the flesh over them was stark white. The Rat was at Marco’s right, in full military uniform. In contrast to the Queen, he burned. His face burned crimson, his eyes burned grey, both with a satisfaction that was as ferocious as it was obvious.

Marco rose from his seat and stepped down from the dais. He walked up to the edge of the field of swaying corpses, regarding them coldly, ignoring the stench. Then he turned to the crowd and projected his voice, simmering with barely contained fury: “Behold the wages of treason. Even for ‘men of God.’”

He paused, then continued into the echoing quiet.

“My beloved Samavians. You will have heard all manner of rumor by now. I will tell you the truth, as befits a king to tell and his people to hear. Captain Ratcliffe and I felt compelled to leave Melzarr in secret so that we could draw up further reforms. I have not forgotten the urgency with which such reforms are needed.” He paused again. “Neither have certain members of the nobility, it seems, which is why he and I were attacked and he nearly killed.

“The last words of one of the traitors, almost certainly, echoed some of the rumors that are in circulation. I am not surprised that such filthy lies are circulating. There is no better way to discredit one’s political enemies.” It ate at his insides like acid, that he had to lie to his people in this way. One more ugly political reality.

“Captain Ratcliffe, for all that he is not Samavian, is nonetheless a patriot of Samavia. He stood by me and my father of blessed memory when we were ragged exiles; he went to great lengths to help us fulfill the legacy of the first King Ivor. He is like a brother to me. And that is why I am taking the long-overdue action of making him, legally, a member of the royal family. Anyone who lifts a finger against him henceforth is guilty of treason.”

Murmurs went up from where the nobles stood in the crowd. Marco's voice rode right over them as he walked back to the dais and stood before it.

“The Fedorović,” he continued, “were restored to the throne so that Samavia could be brought into another golden age. Without reform, there can _be_ no new golden age, only corruption and injustice with somewhat less violence than when the Maranović and the Iarović were at each other’s throats. And that, only until the Soviets seduce us with promises of an egalitarianism that they themselves have certainly not displayed. Or take us by force of arms.

“You, my beloveds, ordinary Samavians: You are the men and women who till the soil, bake the bread, build the machines, raise the next generation of Samavians. You are the heart and the soul of this country.”

This time his words were the ones overridden, with shouts and cheers. There was an angry edge to them, though, and before long Marco put up his hand to quell them.

“As the heart and soul of this country, you deserve to live in a modern Samavia. Over the next several years, I intend for electricity, plumbing, and telephone service to be brought to every mountaintop, every valley, every plain, every seaside or riverside village and island, and every city of this nation. Not only will this allow the poorest among you to live in cleanliness and obtain news of the world outside our borders, but it will provide work, honest work that pays an honest day’s wages, for Samavian men and women who can barely put food on their own tables right now.”

The cheers erupted again, and this time they were purely of joy. They went on for a minute, two minutes. Marco allowed them to die down of their own accord.

“Another reform I intend to institute,” he said as silence fell over the square once more, “is the abolition of torture. If Samavia is to take her rightful place among the commonwealth of modern nations, she must give up this barbarity, which not only profoundly violates the dignity of both torturer and tortured but serves no useful purpose. Even a tyrant like Napoleon understood that ‘the poor wretches’ who are tortured will simply tell the interrogator what he wishes to hear.”

New grumbles of displeasure arose from the nobles. Standing among them was Dragan of Kragujevac, who raised his head and favored Marco with a stony stare that fell just short of outright insubordination. Marco disregarded it entirely.

“Finally, my beloveds, I wish to honor the brave men of Kragujevac, without whom the last few weeks would have turned out very differently. The city of Kragujevac is an ancient seat of learning. The rest of Samavia could take lessons from its devotion to education and culture. In the future, I hope to see a Samavia in which every man, woman, and child of sufficient age can read, write, and reckon on paper or slate. When it is time to embark upon that endeavor, I will draw on the schoolmasters and professors of Kragujevac city to help bring it to fruition.

“In the meantime, I honor and recognize Kragujevac city as a second capitol of Samavia. It is not Melzarr, no, but it is an important city, one of industry as well as education. And I honor and recognize Dragan of Kragujevac, the future Duke of Kragujevac, a man who was indispensable in helping me bring these traitors to justice and rescue Captain Ratcliffe, with the Medal of Courage — and I welcome him as the newest member of my Council.”

In one half of a second, Dragan’s expression shifted from one of _froideur_ to one of blank shock. In the other half of the second, he recovered his aplomb completely. Striding out from among his muttering peers, he stopped in front of Marco, fell to one knee, and looked up. The sharp, resolute blue eyes held Marco’s as his king leaned forward to drape the midnight-blue ribbon around Dragan’s shoulders. It was the gaze of an equal, not of an inferior. 

Marco could not take offense. It was as much his reward as the medal was Dragan’s.

 

He kept his own head raised and his eyes straight ahead as he strode down the long hall toward the throne room shortly thereafter. But no one with eyes to see could have missed the various and sundry nobles who dropped to their knees as he passed by, a few even grasping the hem of his robe and kissing it. These included some who had fairly snarled at him a year before. Other lords remained standing, surly, offering up the bare minimum of a nod that protocol required.

Marco ignored them all. Those who professed changes of heart were welcome to prove the sincerity of those professions. As for the rest… their time would come. The Rat had said, _There may very well be nobles with their fine hands in this, although I never heard any of their names._ Quite possibly, those names would eventually out, and equally possibly, they would be no surprise.

The throne room was the scene of more abject kneeling, as well as numerous offers of vassalhood. Marco blithely clasped the hands of each and every lord who fell to his knees before the throne, then exchanged the ancient oaths with him. Each clasp and each exchange of oaths was rote, void of emotional charge, mildly farcical, even. _But let them all swear before a horde of witnesses,_ Marco thought. _Who knows, they might surprise me by actually honoring their oaths._

The impromptu commendation ceremonies were followed by the usual quotidian matters addressed in the throne room. Afterward he and his Councilors adjourned to the Chamber, where he formally introduced Dragan. Then commenced the longest session he could remember having presided over, during which the plans he had announced before the crowd began, _just_ began, to take shape. Marco, the Rat, Dragan, Rastka, Vorvensk, and all the rest took both luncheon and dinner in the Chamber. Between bites and sips, they raised arguments, proferred suggestions, and scribbled notes and diagrams and maps; and they continued as servants cleared the table around them.

Finally, Marco threw up his hands and said, “Gentlemen. It has been a long day, and these plans will not be perfected in a single overnight session — or even a month of such sessions. Let us reconvene tomorrow and pick up where we left off.”

It was with great relief that shortly thereafter he shut the door of his study behind him, then sank into his chair. After so long and momentous a day, he needed solitude and quiet in which to think.

It was not that bed did not beckon him; he simply needed a moment alone before joining his queen there. He hoped sleep would restore him and bring him no dreams of swaying corpses or heads on pikes. In the morning, both of them refreshed, he would pull Paulina against him and they would, as they had been doing for the better part of a week now, bend their bodies to the task of mending the love between them. And later, he thought, they two and the Rat and the children could take breakfast in the library…

Once more, the door made no sound, but the thump of crutches was unmistakeable. Marco looked up to see the Rat nudging the door closed with the tip of one crutch, then standing there grinning. Between the gold tooth he now sported and the crook in his nose, Marco thought he looked more rakish than ever before. And not a little enticing.

“So. We’re brothers now, are we?”

“In the eyes of Samavian law, we are, more or less,” Marco said, pushing his chair away from the desk and leaning back in it.

The Rat’s eyes glittered. “Fancy a spot of incest?”

Perhaps it was the fatigue. Perhaps it was the relief of everything having been put to rights. But Marco couldn’t help himself: He threw back his head and roared.

“Christ, Jem,” he finally said, wiping his eyes.

“Ah, you’re growing a sense of humor, finally. After only eight years on the throne. I’m surprised you didn't discover the need for one sooner.”

“Had I no sense of humor, how would I deal with an insolent excuse for a vassal like you?” Marco demanded, trying and failing utterly to sound stern.

“Oh, I don’t know, Marco. I’m sure you could find some way of impressing obedience into me. In bed, preferably.”

Marco’s face flamed, and other bits of him seemed to grow warm as well. “Perhaps you’re not aware that Paulina has come into my study more than once in recent weeks? I’m fairly sure she would not appreciate stumbling onto such a scene.”

“My lady the Queen of Samavia is, I am told by one of her ladies in waiting, fast asleep. She had got the impression that the Chamber session would go well into the night. Truth be told, Marco, I had that impression as well, until you dismissed the lot of us.”

He moved fluidly to the front of the desk, then gazed down. Marco watched mischief and desire play in the grey eyes like flames in a hearth as the Rat added, “But, you know, the door _does_ have a lock to it.”

From a hip pocket in his captain’s uniform he took a small object and laid it on the desk. A small vial, the contents of which glowed a deep gold in the muted light of the electric sconces.

Just as in the dacha, the air in the study seemed to thicken, like honey. Marco tried to breathe of it deeply anyway. “And where, exactly, in here do you propose that … anything take place?”

The grin widened. “I’d say a carpet in a warm room is a fair sight more comfortable than a horse blanket on the ground in early spring, wouldn’t you?”

Marco hesitated for a moment. Then he rose, palmed the vial in his left hand, and moved around the desk and to the door. The tumbler of the lock made a soft _snick_ as he turned the knob. He turned to face the Rat again, walked to the middle of the room, sank to his knees, and sat back on his heels, laying the vial on the carpet several inches away. 

His lips were parted; his pulse hammered in his throat. A tiny, mischievous voice in his brain — where in the name of Hell did such a voice _come_ from? — urged him to raise his hands to the Rat clasped, as if in prayer. He ignored it. Not for all the gold on earth would he dash that look of hot-eyed anticipation from the Rat’s face — certainly not for a jest that even the Rat wasn’t minded to make.

The Rat’s crutches made three, four, five thumps against the carpet, and then he stood directly in front of where Marco knelt. Just as he had done little more than two weeks before, he pushed them away from his body; this time he tumbled downward into the outstretched arms of his lord and liege.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Savvierthanu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/savvierthanu) for reading this over.
> 
> Samavia, being fictional, could be anywhere in Eastern Europe, but I was inspired by [these](http://redorcsblog.blogspot.ie/2010/12/fictional-central-eastern-europe.html) [maps](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bY8gAjXr0h4/TRPBJq6b4nI/AAAAAAAAAA0/rzK05JH0aIs/s1600/ottoman.jpg) of Central and Eastern European countries in fiction, on which it stands in for middle and southern Serbia. Compare them with [an actual map of Serbia](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Serbia_Map.png) and you can see that “Melzarr” is actually Belgrade. The “great basin” mentioned in this fic is the [Pannonian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonian_Plain); “the river plain” alludes to the Danube and Sava rivers, at whose confluence Belgrade sits.
> 
> The city of [Kragujevac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kragujevac) (spelled “Kragojevatz” on the vintage maps that Red Orc used to map out fictional Europe) lies eighty-seven and a half miles to the south in the region of [Šumadija](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0umadija), in mountainous terrain that begins to rise just south of Belgrade. The name does means a hawk’s aerie. As Wikipedia says, Kragujevac has been the capitol of Serbia several times, including for a year in WWI, and it is important in terms of both culture and industry. I borrowed and reworked this bit of its history for the fic, extending the name “Kragujevac” to much of Šumadija and making that area into a duchy. Jagodina, Ćuprija, and Velika-Plana are actual place names in Šumadija. 
> 
> A ceremony in which a would-be vassal swears fealty to his lord is properly called a [commendation ceremony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_ceremony). I adapted the words of the oath and its acceptance from the details of the Wikipedia article. 
> 
> I’ve changed the spellings of the canonical royal houses to better match Serbian orthography (e.g., “Fedorovitch” becomes “Fedorović”). For OCs in this story I use Serbian [given](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Serbian_given_names) [names](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_names#Slavic_names_in_Serbia) and [surnames](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian-language_surnames). [Jovan Buća](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bu%C4%87a_noble_family), [Vukan Nemanjić](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemanji%C4%87_dynasty), and [Branimir Jakšić](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak%C5%A1i%C4%87_noble_family) all bear the names of royal or noble Serbian houses that dissolved centuries ago. I've also swiped names from two of the ancient, now-defunct [Serb clans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serb_clans#Highland_tribes_and_clans), the [Orlovići](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlovi%C4%87_clan) and the [Rovčani](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rov%C4%8Dani), for two of my three fictional mountain clans. My third clan bears [a name with an interesting etymology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haramba%C5%A1i%C4%87).
> 
> I have not kept the titles of Samavian nobility consistent with those historically used in Serbia. In both “Lord and Liege” and “Vassal” I kept Rastka a baron as he is in canon and made Paulina’s father a count, but barons and counts in Serbia are respectively called _boyars_ and _grafs_. The Slavic term [_voivode_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivode), originally a military commander (literally, a warlord), over time in various countries came to designate anything from a prince or duke to a territorial governor/administrator. _Gospodin_ means “Mister” or “sir” in Serbian.
> 
> “Tabbies” — from “Tabitha,” then a name with strong religious connotations — were women who attended meetings of evangelical Baptists at Exeter Hall in London (["tabby meetings”](http://tinyurl.com/lyjq6jc)); many would have done charity work among the poor. “Tent shouters out of Wales” alludes to [the Welsh Pentacostal revival of the early 20th century](http://www.prdienstberger.com/nation/Chap8wpr.htm). “Sallies” are of course members of the Salvation Army. An Orthodox patriarch (other than that of Constantinople) is addressed as [“Your Beatitude.”](http://www.goarch.org/resources/etiquette) The Feast of the Epiphany is January 6 (also Twelfth Night).
> 
> The type of mountain climbing described in this fic is known as [aid climbing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aid_climbing). It was the traditional way to climb a mountain until very modern times.
> 
> Finally, _Sjaj_ , pronounced something like “see’ _eye_ ,” means “radiance” or “splendor” in Serbian; and _Gavrana_ means "raven-black.”


End file.
